On Patience

Isabella G. Mead

Time assembles in the bellies of

friends. One leans in to hear better,

one’s back aches violently. Bronze—

denser than steel—stops clocks, crushes

the minute hand so that babies forget how

to somersault in their russet vaults. Perceiv-

ed only at the time of molten making, mother

and child are agents of possibility. Now they

have cooled, their fates gather like fabric

in this place of endless talk. They wait

for the green earth to shake their

gummed infants loose.

Like Hjold, I begged for

the end. Thirteen days late,

calcifying. A doctor confirmed

oligohydramnios—longest word

for lack. In depleted shallows, the

baby shuddered, pressed her feet to

my lungs. When she turned, I felt the

warm ground heave. Time stopped—re-

sumed the moment her cry split the cold

air, scattering overdue hours. Twenty-

four exiled from the line before the sun

caught us up. I saw silvered light

touch her strands of hair. In the end,

a mere day and night. What luck!

Unlike Hjold and I, these women

will be waiting forever.

after a series of photographs on Wikimedia Commons depicting Charles Leplae’s ‘Two Pregnant Women’ (1952-1953)

ISABELLA G MEAD’s debut poetry collection, The Infant Vine, was published in 2024 by UWAP. Her work has also appeared in Meanjin, Island, Griffith Review, Westerly, Cordite and Anthropocene. In 2024, she won the Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize. She lives, writes and raises her children on unceded Wurundjeri land.