Tamara Madison
Morpheus Dips His Oar
by Tamara Madison
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Tamara Madison is the author of three full-length volumes of poetry, “Wild Domestic”, “Moraine” (both from Pearl Editions) and “Morpheus Dips His Oar” (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and two chapbooks. Her work has appeared in the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, and many other publications. Read more about Tamara at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.
Mammalia
Those months I would swim
while my child slept inside me,
suspended in the subterranean lake
of my body. I wondered
how the water sounded to her,
filtered through all that flesh
and fluid as we moved together
smoothly down the pool’s blue lane.
When I swam on my back,
with each stroke I watched the water
roll down my black-clad belly
and I thought of an orca moving
at the ocean’s surface, wet
with the rising, and full with new life;
I saw my daughter and me moving
through our own small sea
the way the whale mother and child
moved through theirs, water flowing
down my belly, water flowing down
her back, little mammals cradled
safe inside.
