Weekly Poem: 'Miracle Blanket'

**By Erika Meitner** My mother calls it _that straitjacket._ _Do you still put_ _the baby to sleep_ _in that straitjacket?_ she asks, and I say Mom, you mean _the miracle blanket?_ and she says _yes,_ _the straitjacket,_ and I have to admit she's right, that it looks like a straitjacket for babies, especially in the "natural" color which resembles a tortilla so when he's wrapped the baby seems like a burrito with a head, and some nights the straitjacket helps him sleep, but some nights it does not though we follow step-by-step instructions and we shush and swing the baby wrapped tight in his straitjacket, but he screams and won't go down, which is what we call sleep now -- _going down_, as if he's drowning in his straitjacket at 3 a.m. in our bedroom and we want him to drown -- we'll do anything to make him go down, even pray. Nicholas of Tolentino, the patron saint of babies, is said to have resurrected over 100 dead children, including several who had drowned together. He always told those he helped _to say nothing of this._ Holy innocence, my son in his miracle blanket is sleeping. O faithful and glorious martyr, say nothing of this.   "Erika Meitner":http://www.erikameitner.com/ is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program. She is also completing her doctorate in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. She has published three books of poems: "Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore" (2003, "Anhinga Press":http://www.anhinga.org/); "Ideal Cities," winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series competition and published in 2010 by "HarperCollins":http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Ideal-Cities-Erika-Meitner/?isbn=9780061995187; and "Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls" (2003, "Anhinga Press":http://www.anhinga.org/).