Angels

Repetition is only a means of making the border visible.

-       Milan Kundera

-       The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

In March we could only see the line that drew

A border between our daughters

Within that quivering image of life.

It was more like a series of vague

Dots than a line, in this,

Their second month.

Ultrasound waves had penetrated

The quiet of their minute dreams,

As we uncertain parents anxiously peered

At the television screen for signs

Of movement, of malformation;

A monthly ritual not unlike

A Delphic visit, except

Our oracle was science.

By May the line was more visibly

A membrane, stretched between

Two lives, yet still as evanescent

As angel’s wings, cut in cross

Section by a sonic scalpel.

The babies stretched and yawned

Seeming more human than before.

The last time we saw the line

Was in September just before

It was winnowed aside,

Strong in its barrier

Keeping lives distinct

Maintaining the illusion that flesh

And bone are all the border

That life may ever need