I have recently written a poem in the third person as a series of snapshots over the week of my son’s birth. By concentrating on the visual, not the emotions – my usual starting point for writing – I’ve been much more able to accept how dark it all was and find a real compassion for myself back then. I’ve called it ‘The End but not the Means’ for obvious reasons.

The End but not the Means

Bright blue veins stretch a map across her belly,

giving no indication what’s happening underground.

Her hand cups the full-moon, the cusp of new life;

the woman dreams as cells are dividing, beginning.

A sudden panic of white coats round a monitor,

two on their phones, the others inflated with facts.

The woman no longer exists, she’s just a vessel grown in size

with the same pale hand now gripping on for life.

A curtain cuts her clean in half, a foretaste of the scar.

Tears stream from her unseeing drug-fogged eyes.

Bright fluorescent lights and Technicolor red:

waterfalls, rivulets, forceps and a beck.

An oxygen mask hides her face, cannulas cover her arms,

a latex glove wields a thread, pulls the gash taught and tight.

One hand holds a purple, glistening tiny fist, the other

strokes dark wet hair on hospital-issue white.

A score of cards displayed randomly on the shelf, the wall, the door.

Late morning sun pervades their bedroom: a yellow halo glow

surrounding three heads on the pillows leaning in to touch, all

unaware of this moment of calm: hand in hand in hand.

(c) Kaye Heyes 2013