Part 1 

Hello Babies, welcome to Earth
- Kurt Vonnegut

1995 5am

                        Huey,
Oh!      Cry! 

             My loved
ten fingered and toed
two eyed and eared
seven minute old, six and a quarter pound boy

Cry! 

The light must be a shock but
wrapped in
yellow
blankets, docile,

coated in amniotic fluid
as a stranger's steady hands
gently pat your head and body dry

baby, let me
welcome you and hum your sleep, 
swaying back
and forth in daylight cotton

tenuously cradled in my arms; 

Cry! 

5:30am Tests

Pulmonary
and
Cardiovascular

why can't they just say

heart & lungs

like the rest of us
                                     he is
                                                   scared and all he has of me is liquor amnii & my tears
                                                   washed onto yellow cotton wrapped around him;
                                                   his first embrace after arriving, silent, to this world.

[fruit]

            [Richard & Betty Shaw

            a carpenter and a seamstress.
            wanted nothing more than each other in
him.

            sweat off both their bodies
on a scratchy mid september bed
            they create together.

             &

nine months later
            shrieks his way into their warm embrace and
            a tear-stained blanket.

             Aaron]

Recovery

You woke up two days after the operation, squirming in agony
opened your tired eyes
to the sun burning
through a slit in the blinds.

Your little feet kick out against the pain
            Bronchospasms are a serious matter
Huey, it must burden you so to breathe
            If the problem recurs, he'll have to be treated again.

Water sloshing around
in your lungs, they say,
will probably strain your heart.

In The Hospital Again

Three months after going home, 
Aaron in a stroller in the waiting room

Huey wheezing in his mother's arms, hot breath
rustling through the water in his lungs
                                                           [again] 
                                                           
                                                      gurgling in & out.

            in & out
            in and
                                    and
                       his mother screaming for help
            &        a nurse down the hallway —fetch the doctor— &
                       another, inexperienced and in the way,
            running into the waiting room with a stethoscope
            & a blanket, focused on the aspirating baby
            runs into and over Aaron's stroller; sends the items in her hands to the air.            

Baby Boy Shaw

 

                                                                    Yellow hurt.

Part 2 

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. 
- Kurt Vonnegut

Grade 12 English, 1972

Last class of the day,
usually his favourite.
Right leg numb, pressed against grey desk metal.
Eyes lazily skimmed the story before him.

Aaron stared out the window and flinched when
Mrs. Daisy asked what exactly about the wallpaper was queer. Lied instead
of telling her he also felt  
         nauseous at the thought
                                                   of being surrounded by
                                                                                                         so much yellow.

Birthday Present

He found a car waiting in the driveway Friday afternoon, 
gleaming underneath a triple-chocolate cake on the verge of melting. 
               Almost blinded him.

A '68 Ford Galaxie, 
               Same brand they use for taxi-cabs
joked Senior. 

Sat on the curb eating overwarm chocolate cake
thanked his dad and ma and ate and sighed and thought

Thank god it's green.

A Bad Heart

Sweat beaded on the back of Huey's neck in the late July heat of
the Shop & Save parking lot
as he walked back to the shade, gasping. 

His mother told him not to work himself too hard,
          his lungs might not keep up
So he watched the cart reflect sunshine as it flew downhill

Could have run after it, but in that second,
              confused, alone, and short of breath,
                                          a single yellow shopping cart wasn't worth it. 

Yellow Hurt

That Sunday, 
bent over the hood of the Galaxie, 
          adjusted the timing belt and thought of butterflies,

Didn't have time to react to the
         rattling
                      of
                      an out of control shopping cart barreling down the street.

Richard and Betty requested no yellow flowers on the coffin.