The veil crossed your mother’s shoulders,
a curtain to contain the gore.
More or less.
Less a veil
more a curtain-door
to a tabernacle:
the surgical table,
Sinai,
electrocardiograph chirping an incantation.
The obstetrician—white coat, ephod, hoshen—incises
and so
drags the numinous
from your mother’s entrails.
A nurse crosses the room
swabs membrane from flesh
binds a swaddle
for the thousandth time.
Here, she says, as if passing me an aspirin (I needed one)
and places you in my palm.
With that,
the axis mundi:
heaven, earth, theophany
and you,
incredulous, eyes filled with lidocaine and fentanyl,
respiring the material
world
while I
interpret the ineffable,
uncontainable
miracle,
to realize that all is inviolable,
eternal,
and redeemed.