Early Lessons: Despair (The Mosquito Netting)

Intense and terrible, I think, must be the loneliness/Of infants . . .
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

It is my first memory—
a crib memory—
the form of my father
looming high above me

and then his voice
and mother’s voice
and meaning in their words!

I kept looking up,
hungry for their faces.

I kept reaching my wild hands up to vacuous air.

Then came the fright:

A tall caul
billowed over all
and then descended—
so white!

And all the yellow light went white.

And I was sealed off
from the outer world
and left alone
to scream a lung into the white night.

And yet, a small desertion.
Others would ensue in the course of life.

Even today, this moment,
a scrim descends before me.
I reach out,
I touch the web-like pall
and pull away.

I scream out.
The ghosts beyond grow small
and do not hear.