New Beginnings: Conception
this baby was called into being,
sparked by the fire of passion,
the natural loving union of its mother and father.
a shoal of sperm
swimming knowingly against the current,
finding in the dark and deep, the egg.
one was welcomed and invited in.
the tiny conceptus tumbling
into the soft secret cavern of the womb,
chose a place to implant and take root.
this baby was conceived in the clinical light of a laboratory
under a microscope
and the dispassionate spying eye of a scientific technician.
the egg extracted from the mother’s ovary,
adrift in a dish.
the sperm ejaculated and immobilised
injected into the stranded egg.
the fertilised cell divides and divides again.
it is split, each cell separated,
clones frozen,
tiny beings cut off from life,
from the flow of the breath,
the beat of the heart,
the warmth of the mother’s body.
suddenly thawed,
revived
returned to the welcoming waiting womb,
this baby is growing.
this baby knows its parents want it
yet each cell carries awareness
of the powerlessness, the coldness of conception.
each cell holds the experience of being frozen and abandoned,
cut off from life.