Just for today - a poem for midiwives

Today I need  to remember
 the mothers who lived;
the ones
tended at birth by a million
sisters and mothers and neighbors;
Unschooled but not unskilled
called by their God to
sit
and wait with mothers
whose names can not
be written but are
never lost.

Just for today
I want to remember the mothers
who lived;
I want to look at the stars
and count the ones they
saved and not
the ones lost

Just for today,
I want to remember
The whole of earth
born and wrapped
in ancient prayers

Just for day,
before the work begins
of saving mothers lives

I want to consider
the ones who lived;
 the ones
high above me
in the mountains
and across the sea
and in the midst
of war
who still and always
sit beside women
and wait

Unschooled but not
unskilled

There is time later,
 to
consider eclampsia,
and bleeding and
babies who do not
breathe

But today,
I open my
door, listen to
dawn's first  birds
and  count the ones
who lived.

Today
I want to
hold onto the
angels;
to the small
 miracles
of life

the ones
that exist
beyond living
the ones that
cannot be contained
by death.