Sway

It seems it*s not only parents that sway by way of calming their babies.  I notice it sometimes in others, sometimes in myself, sometimes in the mentally ill.  It seems to come from somewhere way back as our genes were formed.

Years ago I stood

In back of a church

In Ypsilanti,

Baby boy in my arms.

I swayed

As mothers do

As fathers do.

It seems

An automatic

Calming sway

Arrives at birth.

The man in the pew

Across the aisle

Rocked and swayed.

There was no baby,

No wind,

No music.

In the pauses I heard

His whisper

As he swayed.

Now I think he may have been

Schizophrenic.

Today we stood in back

As ushers.

We watched children,

Parents,

Old people, young.

One woman swayed in the back pew,

New babe

In arms.

Another man

Two pews up

Swayed in rhythm

To nothing I could hear or see.

Now I wonder if there might be

A universal calming sway

Installed in us

From the very beginning;

If perhaps

We can re-calibrate our ears

Our eyes

Our hips

To rock from one side

To the other

And back again;

To remember

The sway.