First Sound

Happy Birthday Farrah!!

They find it with a wand
pressed to the belly's taut geography,
a frequency hunt, the technician's wrist
turning slow as a safecracker's,

and then there it is.
No music. No rhythm.
Not a single lick of rhythm tho.
A thick, wet insistence,
hoofbeat trapped in a jar,
something galloping in a space
no larger than a fist of rain.

The mother's face does a thing
no camera should be allowed to see.
It's not joy. Nor is it relief.
It's something older; the look of a woman
who has just been told
there are two of her now
and one of them is made
entirely of want.

The technician types a number on the screen.
Rate. Range. Median. Normal.
As though what just happened
could live inside a digit.

As though the sound weren't a small god
hammering to be let in
from the other side of skin.