ULTRA
SOUND(Improvisation in the Key of A)

The transducer unlocks nebulae
        in Luci, leaves
                a glittering radar
on the lampshade-shaped
                display.
I'm in another star system, suddenly
        my Hubble heart
                drifting
        to a new moon
                of blue love.

When the nurse kills the fluorescents,
                        the room
        turns auroral, lowly lit
as probe approaches embryo
        and our breaths
                        catch
on the soft hook of a pulse. Seven weeks
        in the womb
        and the cardiovascular scaffold is up
                and running, red blood cells
                        floating like tubes
        the lazy river of rudimentary venation.

Everything's a blur.
        The screen shimmers and the gyno
                guides the intrepid wand
        to the uterus
        where the little ticker goes,
                        cool as a triphop morpho
                flexing its wings in the shade.
There it is, he says, and the silence
        after he says it
                is a weightlessness I've never tasted,
                        something
so transparent
        a whisper would be blasphemy,
                        so I blaspheme
                                and repeat:

                There it is...

Signal receipt from deep space,
        the beat
                sketches a digital wave
                        on screen, keeping time
        with a patch of pixels
                that blinks,
                        primitively rhythmic. And I
        am alienated
                no more—I
am that man at the ultra,
        the archetype tearing up
        with his wife
                in the dark, dazzled
                        by the brazen,
        immediate will: endeared
                to life
                        by life.