Ibu Robin Lim
When Bear was Born
Grizzly bears give birth
in Winter hibernation.
My daughter’s saltwater woke her.
Later I thought I saw invisible salamanders
coiled around her feet.
Back home, in Indonesia, our volcano erupted.
I tipped the Ferryman well:
turmeric milk, and a batik shawl, very dear,
rushing him to row quickly
across the river, Pain, for my third born.
All her dreams ransomed away
in a half heartbeat,
when the blood came,
when the beating of Bear’s
almost born heart slowed,
she became more a mother than I ever was.
She slipped down, across seven rivers,
and caused Pluto to weep.
We call it belly-birth.
Every year forever,
we will celebrate Bear’s advent,
on the very day his mother died.
She died as a maiden.
She died and resurrected.
Not a wisp of steam rising,
not an iridescent dragonfly winged soul,
not Persephone…
but a stalwart apocalypse of love.
Zhou, my daughter,
born in the Year of the Ox,
became Bear’s Mother.
She is full of grace.
She is every woman.
Ibu Robin Lim is a Filipina-American-Micronesian midwife, founder of Bumi Sehat, a non-profit for medical relief and childbirth clinics in Bali, Aceh, Lombok, Papua, Indonesia, and Philippines. In 2011 Lim was chosen CNN Hero of the Year. Her books include After the Baby’s Birth, Ecology of Gentle Birth, Awakening Birth, Eating for Two, Placenta the Forgotten Chakra, Eat Pray Doula, Geometry of Splitting Souls (poetry, Blue Light Press), Butterfly People (novel), Natural Family Planning Workbook.