By Alice Shapiro

And a child behaved as the angels.

It was a dream where he was lifted skyward

and floated higher than her brilliant body.

From there he saw that he was born

earth-bound, flesh, a man whose place,

attached to female, was meant to mark

her sacrifice

the gift of life.

This entering

accompanied by a verse simply sung

exploded with unearthly sound

and began with startled words:

“I have a mother.”

By Ray Brown

I absolutely love this poem–am intrigued by it.

At first I was put off by the title–seemed to foreshadow for some reason, a sexual encounter. After reading the poem, it now can have duel meaning–can be read one of two ways. Perhaps entrance into the world–entrance into life. I am not sure what the author intended. If it were my decision, I would drop the word “First” and simply call the poem “Entrance.”

The beauty of this poem is in the dynamic of its words. They live together well, coalesce in my mind, capture my heart as certainly as they are intriguing to my intellect. They make me want to read more of this writer’s work. 

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Ray Brown began writing in 1987 while in the midst of a personal crisis. For the next 20 years he would write on the back of napkins, on reports in business meetings, on index cards, in a small notebook, on his computer. In December 2008, he started his blog Poetry by Ray Brown. Since then Ray’s work has been published at journals including The Edison Literary Review, The Blue Collar Review, FreeXpresSion, The River Poets Journal, The New Jersey Poetry Society Anthology, Big Hammer, The River, and vox poetica and his first collection of poetry, I Have His Letters Still, is available at Amazon. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Ray just returned to his alma mater to hold a poetry reading at his 40th reunion. He lives and writes in Frenchtown NJ.