“It’s a new dawn.”
                                                —Jefferson Airplane

Decades have passed since I stepped over
              the threshold of Bois-Gentil, the spring
                            of those butterfly movements in my womb.

Geneva’s gray lifted as alpine peaks
              sloughed off winter’s pea-soup. Glaciers sparkled
                            like white quartz against deep blue.

And I entered the clinic, its palatial Swiss elegance
             devoted to birth. Contractions quickening,
                          I barely noticed the dark green shutters

and red-tiled roof. It’s only now, from a photo
              found deep in the web’s Swiss history, that I see
                            their vividness against a graceful white façade.

That I learn the fate of the Clinic “Kind Wood,”
              scene of my rite of passage into motherhood.
                             A ghost of my past, it no longer sits amidst

perfumed gardens on the route de Malagnou.
              Yet, the odor of roses, white and purple lilacs,
                            and flowers whose names I never knew

still waft through my mind’s French doors—
             no longer stalled in winter bleakness,
                      waiting for life to start.

Sandi Stromberg led a nomadic life until she arrived in Houston, Texas, where putting down roots in gumbo earth has been challenging. Her poetry has been nominated three times for a Pushcart and twice for Best of the Net. Recent publications include The Ekphrastic Review, MockingHeart Review, San Pedro River Review, and in Dutch in the Netherlands in Brabant Cultureel.