Edited and introduced by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc.

This week’s poem comes from someone who knows, and has written in other places, about the experience of losing a baby. Out of that deep loss comes this spell, this deep blessing, for her sister’s baby. That it is tied to this time of year seems just right.

I like to think and talk about the craft of poetry: techniques employed, forms created and adapted, etc. But poems like this one remind me that craft is secondary. The best work contains real risk and real struggle at its core.

Arielle Greenberg lives in Belfast with her family and has published several books including “Slice” and “Locally Made Panties.” She teaches in the community and in the Oregon State University-Cascades MFA program.

A Spell for My Sister’s Baby

By Arielle Greenberg

December 10

It is a shadow time,

but then shadows are made by light.

Demons and priestesses and fallible humans all know this.

It is a long time of the dark edge of the wheel,

so also called the shortest time.

It is a death time which means it is a life time,

a baby time,

an hour in the loose grasp of centuries,

and you are on your way to us in the desert in a very old place indeed.

A holy place, a war place.

You are broker (so do not break).

You are origin.

We are waiting on your safe arrival.

It is a dark day where I am and a light night where you are.

Seven years ago, good luck, I had a baby who had already died.

Let him be the chute by which you access this,

the lit paraffin candle by which you glow on in.

Do not listen to those who say it is a bad world.

It is a good world, and just right for babies named

for how they might make a place more beautiful and more sacred.

You are needed, little girl.

Come now and safe, in the good hour,

with your shining festivals and your many blessings.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is Portland’s poet laureate. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2016 Arielle Greenberg. It appears here by permission of the author.

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