A Human Presence

"Even so
I kept right on going on
a sort of human statement..."
--Anne Sexton


What presence here
as in utero dictates?
Decide, it says, to be something!
But I am a fish
in terrible waters,
blind in the dark,
milky eyes like white oysters.
Water breaks over forceps
grasping at my crowning head
where the skin bursts
bruise-red and wrinkled.
I would decide, I say,
if I could see a light somewhere.
Here, where I am
there is never enough.
I would forgive my eyes,
for one ray
bright as a furnace.
Come, my blind sister, my other birth.
In our black hunger
we eat hope
drink expectations
like sacraments. In our mouth
they become something
unmistakably human.