Birthing in the Center of the Earth, by Ruth Mota

Posted on December 3, 2020

Over 50% of deliveries in Brazil are done by Caesarian Section. In private hospitals the incidence can be as high as 84%. Ministerio de Saude, Rio de Janeiro 2019

The ageless midwife of the Amazon

clothes herself in white when she is summoned.

Wet season now. No paths to climb –

all her world a womb of water. Steady at the oar,

she glides round lily pads large as heliports

to the birthing mother’s stilted house.

Arara, Arara…macaws announce she is arrived

for the thousandth time, each visit marked like bird-scratch

painted on her hands. The men dismissed, she settles in

between the spreading thighs. Watch how her fingers,

knotted as the roots of ceiba trees, slide round the uterus,

swivel the wandering babe to the entrance of that slippery cave.

The midwife soothes with songs of the Tupinamba’.

as she cooks and cleans, then kneads the mother’s belly.

They wait. No rushing, no appointed hour. Let life

enter on its own time. Let the new one come cascading

like the river into earthen palms, emerging under howls,

his tethered cord bit free by teeth that glimmer in the firelight.