In a Plague Year, a Glass Baby Grows Inside
During the plague year, I plant so many things:
walls of herbs, extravagant dahlias, a hummingbird garden.
Without any touch at all, an immaculate conception:
a glass baby grows inside me. All the scans attest.
A miracle child, delicate as sugar or snow.
It’s not your imagination. It’s not God visiting
you, not your Magnificat. It’s just, you had time
on your hands and so much energy. You planted
so much a flower bloomed inside you.
It could have been a tumor, a shadow, a misread.
At any rate, I hope by the end of the Plague Year
I will give birth to a magic baby, one so fragile
she cannot be touched. She’ll glisten in the sunlight.
She deserves a castle surrounded by a high rose bramble.
In a Plague Year, we are all having babies. We sing them
songs in the night to quiet their voices.
You see, my baby may be imaginary. All the ultrasounds
come back inconclusive. I wrap myself in eyelash sweaters
and fuzzy pink blankets. You never know what the end
of a plague will bring. First the bloom of spring,
then death, or angels, or a chrysalis baby, born
in a peach, bamboo shoot or a sweetpea, a magic blessing,
a baby that rides a butterfly and sips from a thimble.
The end won’t be so hard, now. The shuttering of light,
the long cold nights. Remember I’ve been planted.
Planting. Planed. All that’s left is a miracle.
walls of herbs, extravagant dahlias, a hummingbird garden.
Without any touch at all, an immaculate conception:
a glass baby grows inside me. All the scans attest.
A miracle child, delicate as sugar or snow.
It’s not your imagination. It’s not God visiting
you, not your Magnificat. It’s just, you had time
on your hands and so much energy. You planted
so much a flower bloomed inside you.
It could have been a tumor, a shadow, a misread.
At any rate, I hope by the end of the Plague Year
I will give birth to a magic baby, one so fragile
she cannot be touched. She’ll glisten in the sunlight.
She deserves a castle surrounded by a high rose bramble.
In a Plague Year, we are all having babies. We sing them
songs in the night to quiet their voices.
You see, my baby may be imaginary. All the ultrasounds
come back inconclusive. I wrap myself in eyelash sweaters
and fuzzy pink blankets. You never know what the end
of a plague will bring. First the bloom of spring,
then death, or angels, or a chrysalis baby, born
in a peach, bamboo shoot or a sweetpea, a magic blessing,
a baby that rides a butterfly and sips from a thimble.
The end won’t be so hard, now. The shuttering of light,
the long cold nights. Remember I’ve been planted.
Planting. Planed. All that’s left is a miracle.
November / December 2022
Jeannine Hall Gailey is a poet with Multiple Sclerosis who served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She's the author of six books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the Elgin Award, and the upcoming Flare, Corona from BOA Editions. She has a B.S. in Biology and M.A. in English from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Pacific University. Her work appeared in journals like The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Find her at Twitter and Instagram: @webbish6.
Art: Cat in Living Room. Oil on canvas. T. Aguilera.