.Birth

I have always said

(and I think this is true)

if I had an older brother

he would have no younger brother.

Birth

Bob Komives

So it was

on May 4, 1943

as two of my sisters waited in my home-to-be,

(on Van Buren, six blocks away)

and two in my school-to-be

(Saint Columba, seven blocks away)

I arrived

at the Northern Pacific Benefit Association Hospital

on Charles Avenue,

Saint Paul,

Minnesota.

The hospital I would visit again, again and again

with broken fingers,

evil appendix,

Osgood Slaughter,

gashed wrist,

and the like.

It is the place to which I ran

after I saw a terrible lightning bolt strike,

heard its boom.

The hospital chimney!

I ran at my top speed to see this brick giant.

Yes, a jagged, open rip from top to bottom.

It is hard to believe my memory,

but I see myself there standing alone,

as if I were first on scene,

mouth open to this destructive miracle by nature.

It is hard to believe my memory,

but I also remember standing nearby,

a few years earlier,

propped by my dad's hand on the hood of his car.

My mother was in the hospital,

a patient

waving to me from a second-floor window.

She had to see her son on his first birthday.

It always seemed normal

(and I know this is untrue)

that my father’s railroad should put our hospital

where I could run to it,

walk to it,

whenever I needed it.

Once I went with a policeman in his car.

But that must be another story

so that this story can conclude:

I was born.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2013 :: Birth:: 1306