The Linnet's Wings Press
:
This Crazy Urge to Live
by Bobby Steve Baker
In every person's story we find a fragment of our own. For we're all connected by our needs and wants:
Personal, cultural, social, and economic. This is a book that asks one to reflect on this while celebrating
the ups and downs of love and life, of community and work, of family and its line, and always acknowledging
family as landmark, as point of reference, as it builds a young man's tale.
For when we leave the roost and learn to fly it's then we realise that no matter what we're never truly
alone as we make and break connections, and if we're lucky we allow each expericnce to move us on. It's
the story of a son, father, husband, lover and friend.
The prologue chosen to introduce the body of work in the poetry/photography art book,'This Crazy
Urge to Live', is One Flesh #2 : a poem that illustrates the magic, of conception, of birth, of spirit, of love.
Bobby Steve shot a a very lovely 'Mother and Newborn' photo to illustrate the poem. Together they paint
the spirit of the body of work that sits snugly between the covers.
Excerpt
before the first kick is felt from inside out
before people pat a belly as communal property
long before a baby could survive without
a physical attachment to its mother’s flesh
and in this way they could be called one flesh
the baby is a separate human everyone knows this
the Greeks stopped short with eros filios agape
we need another word for love of a child
in the birthing room when the child is laid
to the mother’s breast it is transcendent ungraspable
fathers now are present and this creates a bond for life
but his experience is overshadowed let’s not kid ourselves
for the baby the mother’s body is borrowed
for the sake of respiration and nourishment
who knows if a baby in utero desires love
but everyone knows this authenticity
a baby gets love perfectly and constantly
witnesses have seen a glow an aura that surrounds
this indescribable event I have seen it myself
and every time I leave the birthing room I feel
with no thought that did not just happen
one tiny human exiting a larger human the crisis
of separation one into two bleeds into ordinary breath
and I feel for a time we are all one flesh
Bobby Steve Baker -- This Crazy Urge to Live, 2014