Resurrection

The churning ice machine drowns out the sound of her labor pains.

The 24" x 24" floor tiles in the miles of empty hallways in this place must have cost thousands of dollars. The walls and floors are covered with expensive synthetic materials which I can immediately smell upon coming in from the outside, and the food in the cafeteria is the cheapest money can buy. Most of the nurses here are overweight , pasty-faced and tired-looking. I have seen several health-care professionals standing on the curb, smoking on their breaks. This building, this system is considered by many, I'm sure, to be an amazing achievement.

There are bulldozers across the street from this hospital that have sheared off the top layer of land for some new building, probably related to this one. It required the wiping clear of another farm field for the sake of this overstuffed suburbia. There are a couple of coyote decoys around these man-made ponds to scare away the geese. The birds aren't the only ones frightened of this place.

On the other side of the wall is the piercing shrill cry of new things aching to be birthed. A seed's workings make complete sense to me. It goes into the ground to the depth of twice its width. In this precise position, the sun can still warm it, but it is protected from drought by a thin layer of moist earth. Inside that seed is everything the plant needs for the start of life. It is just waiting, dormant. It is waiting for the exact moment when conditions are right for it to part its jacket and bare itself to the world. To become what it will.

The ice machine is silent now, as are the cries behind the wall. Soon, conditions will be right for the new little one to burst forth; To become what she will in our harsh and oftentimes unintelligible world. Maybe she will make some sense of all of this and find a way to make it right.

Hope is, she will at least find some peace in the process.