swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

knowing there would be more
Lisa Baird

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When Whales Went Back to the Water

Say life began here in a tidal pool.
Or hot spring. Or where the earth’s core

steams through fissures in the ocean floor.
I like that all of these theories are wet.

I like to think of the first animal, born
of chaos and collision, molecules whipping

into cellular form. It is calming
to think about geological time scales.

Whales only took 10 million years to leave
the land and commit to salt water.

Who wouldn’t want to sing
to someone 10,000 miles away?

I like that they swam, then walked,
then returned to the water as mammals,

with live births and blowholes, diving deeper
than any other air breather to linger

for hours. I had a story about how quiet
it must be down there, but it’s not

anymore. I keep learning things about other people
that I didn’t want to know. I’ve been practising,

but can only hold my breath for three minutes.
It is calming to think about large numbers.

How many trillions of cells there are in me.
Most of them, not even human. Dividing,

dying, killing, feeding, excreting.
I feel ok today so I guess enough of them

are cooperating with each other.
The wallpaper on my phone says “tolerate

uncertainty” over a picture of a whale.
I like that I can’t see the wrist or finger bones

within its fins. I want to use the word kin
like I’ve always known what it means,

this body recalling times before topsoil,
bread or algebra, before doorways,

bull kelp, forgetting, or photosynthesis.
To reach back to being eager

and alive as our common ancestor
emerging in the flash and muck

alone, but knowing there would be more.

Time Machine

Adults didn’t notice the half-inch
gap between my feet and the floor,
the clean soles of my shoes
as I walked or the dry burden
of dread crushing the air.
It wasn’t a conscious choice
to unlatch, to hover just above.
I slipped out of rooms in silence,
I stared at books or out a window,
safe and quiet as a pinned moth—how
would I know to want anything else?

I don’t think my pain is more important
than it is. But give me a time machine,
I’ll peer through a blur of red to find
the egg that becomes me, a soft jewel
inside my mother’s mother. I’ll set
it on a fingertip, wet and intact, raise
it up to the light, repeat You will
grow to be a wild thing until we both
believe it.

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Lisa Baird (she/her) lives on the territories of the Attawandaron, also the treaty land of the Mississaugas of the New Credit and Dish with One Spoon territory (Guelph ON). Her book, “Winter’s Cold Girls” (Caitlin Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 Relit Award for poetry. www.lisabaird.ca