No Picture

Yesterday my daughter laid down on the technician's white-papered table
And bared her round moon of a belly for the clear blue jelly
To be spread and then the magic wand was placed upon that moon
To measure and see the baby within.

How could we be anything but breathless?
My daughter, her husband, and me?
The technician was quiet and calm and the room was dim
And the first pictures looked like images from the moon
Itself
(It was full last night, did you see it?)
Lunar landscape, pictures of a place I'll never be
No landmarks to recognize, just black and white and gray
I trust you when you say, "See- this is the Sea of Tranquility?
See? This is the tiny foot."
Although the heart, beating with its chambers
Squeezing blood the way it will for the rest of
That child's life-
That was recognizable.

And then the 3-D- the miracle magic of the ultra-sound
Technician!
For there was that baby's nose, eyes, arm up before his face
And it was at once unbelievable and familiar
To gaze into the unborn face of the unborn child
Who carries one quarter of me, one half of my child.
(Sorry- these are my landmarks- how can it be otherwise?)
Those cheeks I am going to kiss.
Those lips which will fasten onto his mother's nipple
Which will learn to form words and eventually
They will tell us of his thoughts.
His wholly unique thoughts.

They gave us a picture and Lily has it in a little album
And I cannot post it here.
I just can't. It's not right, somehow,
To show the world (or even us, I can't help but think)
The face of a child not yet born.
I'm sorry. It just seems to me such an invasion of privacy
This snapping of shots within a mother's womb.

I'm strange this way.
I take things which mean probably not much
And I make a sermon out of them.
I take the face of an unborn child and think
This is sacred.

We will know his face when he is born and
We will love his face because our hearts already know it
And have forever.
Not because we have a picture
But because we have his genes.

Yes. I have to go back to the surface of the moon
Those strange and eerie pictures which first came back
How can this be? Pictures of the moon, its dust, its hills, its quiet dry seas?
No wonder so many people believed they were made up.
That's what it all reminded me of so much.
The moon which floats overhead
Quiet and still
Amazingly and unbelievably reached by man
Who walked upon it, who left footprints, who flew away
And came home, never ceasing to dream
I am sure
Of that walk so far away, those footprints there forever.

My grandchild is only inches away, not a night-sky away.
But for all of that closeness, he is hidden
Until the technician's wand reveals him.
And although it takes my breath and makes me cry
To see him there, floating and quiet
I know quite certainly that we are trespassing
When we look at him.
I hope he doesn't care. I hope he was not disturbed.

That little man
Whom I do not need a picture of
To know
To love
As he floats in the moon of the belly of his mother
As he practices breathing, as he rehearses the living
He will be doing soon,
Here on the surface of the earth
As he makes the preparations for his journey
As does she
Inches and universes away he floats and stretches
Beneath Lily's skin
Beneath his father's hand.

His unborn face
Too beautiful to bear.