This week’s Dispatches from New Motherhood gem is PARADIDDLE by Helena Hoyle King, an intensely moving, lyrical and original poem. The author begins with pregnancy, then takes us into her experience on the NICU, through a richly evoked soundscape.
Helena says, ‘A prominent memory of meeting my newborn on the NICU was of the particular sounds, which at first I found disorientating, but which eventually settled into a peculiar music unique to the NICU. With my poem I wanted to create a positive auditory memory of my baby’s first days, linking his rhythm-section kicks in the womb to his incubator symphony.’
Of her process, Helena says, ‘Writing and reading with a baby who doesn’t sleep at night or nap in the day is hard. During Mothership Writers I developed a tool-kit for future writing, which I can play with as my toddler does plenty of sleeping now!’
Enjoy Helena’s wonderful poem here.
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Paradiddle
Helena Hoyle King
Paradiddle, NOUN, a group of four drum beats produced by using alternate sticks in the pattern right-left-right-right or left-right-left-left
It’s the kick-drum of a pickle, your own perfect paradiddle
keeping tempo we await you, drumming fingers in four time.
I can feel you syncopate
the rolling hiccups as you land
your whole head towards my pelvis, an elbow in my ribcage;
muffled-up percussion in a timpani globe.
A hand upon my belly gently feeling your 16 beat
you’re a soloist rehearsing now preparing for The Show.
Left – right – left – left – paradiddle, paradiddle.
Right – left – right – right.
You are born into a tiptoe hush of rubbing towels and latex gloves,
it’s too long before we first hear you cry.
I see you beyond the glass walls, a glissando of tears,
as for the first time I feel like
I’ve lost the beat.
Nestled in your NICU nest of monitors and feeding tubes,
searching for my baby tangled with the white machines,
I hear the bleeping of your heart.
The descant ‘you can touch him’ rings out
octaves on a cymbal star:
we marvel at the rise and fall of your chest.
This was not in rehearsal, you’re a solo turned ensemble,
a piccolo subsumed by the low brass; I try to tune in to your breath.
The sounds in this ward are bin lids – pen clicks – hand soap – water,
hushed consultations and a thousand tangled wires.
I listen for my mini metronome.
You are placed into my arms, CPAP sounding out a ‘shhhh’,
I’m fixated by your every tiny breath.
Now unplugged from the machinery, you’re rapturous and world-changing,
right – left – right – right
left – right – left –left
little pickle paradiddle play on.
***
Paradiddle by Helena Hoyle King appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.