Newborn

            Newborn

                                                for Donita

With eyes that can’t yet focus

you look around the room with wonder,

at faces draped in linen and hear sounds

unlike the muffled heart you grew up

under.  You hear voices you can’t

articulate, nor differentiate tones

of joy from those that signal danger

in this new world where everything

is strange and you the newest stranger.

                                    —Donnell Hunter

                                                 18 September 2011