Shards - 14 - Upon Holding A Brand New Person

Shards - The 1 Poem Podcast of Cameron Semmens

Give melodies to everything you say, new life must be sung into this world. Let your arms be a lush valley. With syrupy stares sway like a grove of maples in a gentle breeze. Watch their eyes. Whisper ‘open sesame’. Keep watching. Study the red river deltas on their eyelids; and in your mind, follow these tiny rivulets to their surging source. Keep watching. Blow gently on the bouquet of dandelions that is their face. Stoke their downy hair as if it were the ermine fringe of a sovereign’s crown. Smell them like you would a new-blooming rose, aware that thriving comes with fertilising – the scent of poo, itself a miracle. Be the librarian. This soft-covered story with blank-page eyes shelved on your forearms needs your shushing. Quick, sharp shushes for boisterous visitors. Soft, slow shushes for lulling and loving. Let your sighs be fairy floss; let your hums be jester plums. Surrender your vocab and fill your mouth with colourful marbles. This warm body in the corona of your love carries heat passed on through generations; it is the hot tip of an iceberg – the cold bodies of a myriad humans the submerged mass of traits and immunities and adaptations. Hold this vital, restless tip carefully, prayerfully, it can burn through flesh and future.