Rebecca Quinn is a GP in London and part of the Creative Clinic Community which champions creativity as a wellbeing tool for doctors & medical students. She is on instagram: @beccajanequinn
Many around the world celebrate hope at Christmas, with the birth of a baby. This poem explores a mother’s very different experience, yet despite it all, her song is underpinned with the same tremulous hope and longing that makes us human.
nativity
what if the sun were silver and sat in a broken pool of spilt steel and cold
white light, the morning a mere bruised star, fighting
to enervate the ashen sky that hung
floppy and stubborn
refusing to breathe?
what if silence was an absence, and the flickering of the single yellow leaf
on the climbing rose reflected your heartbeat: uncertain, capricious
unwilling to stay?
and what if you had been that other baby
born under a luminous sky, filled with better angels
and you did?
Featured Photo by Alda González-Cuevas on Unsplash
