Tyler and Lily and Mozart
You don’t hear much crying in NICU.
The lungs of these babies lack breath
for crying. Their incubators mute
sounds. There’s electronic anxiety,
you hear its beeps, pings and bells. Also
a taut mother who tells a midwife
she’s sure something’s wrong with his face
and why won’t the doctors say, are they
hiding something? You hear two midwives’
soft talk as they change a feeding tube.
Another reaches through a porthole
of an incubator, lifts Tyler
(29 weeks) now eighteen days,
holds in her palm the least bottomy
bottom in the world and tells Tyler
he’s doing so well while a student
midwife changes his sheet. You hear wheels
on the firm floor and this faint sound,
as if you imagine music. Go
over to Lily, here since April,
but may get home to Nelson next week.
A blanket covers the curve of clear
plastic above her face. Put your ear
close. There. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
You and Lily listen to Mozart.
The lungs of these babies lack breath
for crying. Their incubators mute
sounds. There’s electronic anxiety,
you hear its beeps, pings and bells. Also
a taut mother who tells a midwife
she’s sure something’s wrong with his face
and why won’t the doctors say, are they
hiding something? You hear two midwives’
soft talk as they change a feeding tube.
Another reaches through a porthole
of an incubator, lifts Tyler
(29 weeks) now eighteen days,
holds in her palm the least bottomy
bottom in the world and tells Tyler
he’s doing so well while a student
midwife changes his sheet. You hear wheels
on the firm floor and this faint sound,
as if you imagine music. Go
over to Lily, here since April,
but may get home to Nelson next week.
A blanket covers the curve of clear
plastic above her face. Put your ear
close. There. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
You and Lily listen to Mozart.