Sand between our toes and pockets full 
of sea glass—you sparkle, each of you. 
The smallest ones fuss, though 
 
the moon continues to pull 
the tide out to where it can’t 
be reached. Is this what 
 
we are searching for, the blue 
that haunts us? Once we believed 
it was God who eluded us. Now we know
 
better—the cycles nothing 
more than gerbil runs to next year 
and the next. Yes, 
 
there will be more of you, but 
you will never swarm around me—
not in the way I had hoped. Just
 
as you never squeezed 
yourselves out from between 
my legs the way I had dreamt 
 
you would. Never gentle, no low groan 
as a head is released—an infant cry 
rising into a room. Everything
 
with us was rushed, too much, wrangled 
inside sirens and scalpels. I just wanted 
it all to slow down. To sit and watch 
 
each of you, just as I might watch 
the sun expand into day, a red 
reflection—another moment 
 
in my one imperfect life. But 
it never really worked 
that way, did it? And now 
 
I sit glad, at least, that you have 
each other. Glad that you gave 
me little ones still willing 
 
to search for sea glass— that milky 
glisten between shells and sand, 
to trade the pieces: a perfect white 
 
triangle for a jagged piece of turquoise. 
Because we all know, in the end 
it’s the blue, isn’t it? The blue we search for.

 

 

This poem first appeared in MER Folio “Motherhood as a Catalyst for Change”

https://merliterary.com/2024/03/14/rachel-neve-midbar-poetry-2/