On the hospital bed

my daughter passes me her daughter
hours old and swaddled and in the kicks
and turns and
(something brushes by)

in the flannel’s unswaddling this mid-
winter metamorphosis within my arms
this memory held on chest, in hand,

in this same hospital this moment happened,
the infant’s mother, once hours old—
and this very moment will happen again—

the infant, already Herself a grandmother
astride another hospital bed—
holding Her daughter’s daughter.