My Raptor Poem by Annie Finch

My mind hovered over my baby, like
a raptor, and froze everything it saw.
I looked through my own pregnant belly's raw
perimeters and found his heart to strike
attentive until, helpless with the pound
of still more blood, he seemed to settle down.
It was my loss to feel like god alone
for a new one always listening, to reach
inside for his ears to share the flying speech
I heard so constantly. Within my grown
silence, my sounding, my loud body where
the baby turned, my mind learned not to care
whether thoughts I felt he noticed with no fear
were mine alone—or whether he could hear.