Sunday Scribblings: Birth

The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is birth.

After giving birth to four babies, as clean and pure and close as possible, I am in that birthing realm once again. I've written about birth a number of times and this is an ode to the beauty of birth that I wrote last year. A home birth, a baby boy, and that fertile place: the Full Harvest Moon...

The Moon-Blooded Boy

Each baby arrived early, but never in this lucid way. The boys, ever so ready to tread their way about, could not be late. More so than his brothers, hungry little Govinda, beckoned by an autumn sky, embraced a graceful yet sudden welcome. Little did I know, he would not wait for a dim-lite night.

I was asked by my mid-wives to consume a healthy dose of Vitamin C, for he had ruptured the first seal early. Off to the Co-Op we went, all the while, Govinda(who we referred to as Shani, of the Navagraha, then) breaking his way through blood and womb. Allowing my senses to fall from reality, an endearing acceptance of pain I had willingly developed by the forth pregnancy, I paraded on.

Waddling from aisle to aisle and back home took quite a while. A ridiculously bumpy ride in Hildagard, our 1969 Volkswagen bus, was the escape Govinda anticipated. Under the light of the golden sphere, my flesh, quickly becoming a servant to pain. An invitation from the night's sky, Govinda would leave his cloudy ocean behind to devour a hearty brew of oxygen and hue. Senselessly drunk on a melange of milky midnight, mother, and moon.

I nudged him to stay and swim a bit longer, not knowing that his blood belonged to the moon. And Mani must have his way. So, there he came under the glittering ball in the sky. I closed my eyes, painfully shut, accepting his mulberry bottom in my right palm. And in that moment, I was immediately conscious of who he was, the bringer of a full night's glow.

His papa insisted on holding him bare under the Samhain sky, listening to Autumn's cry. I watched and danced against cold concrete on achy nude feet. Aaron, always humming a whisper to Jah when his newest son is born; Govinda, a silent Hare; me, accepting the shallow howl from a distant breeze; the Full Moon, placing a spell: every twenty-eight days, the moon thirsty boy and his herd of the many who are hungry and free, must come out and play.

Dance in the light of the Moon, Govinda Hare!