Thursday, December 11, 2008

Womb

I do not miss the womb
Some search forever for that place
The trench shrouded by moss
Waiting to be opened with eager fingers
Casually touched and prodded
Hidden in a swamp by weeping willows
The sanctuary waits for a lifetime
Twenty years or ninety – it does not matter
The seeker will find it again and return to ether
Floating in the placenta space, immersed

I wear my womb like a hermit crab
Wears its shell
I drag it from shore to berm, dune to dune
Crying invisibly for shelter I do not seek
Because it is already upon me

I wear the earth like a shroud
I smell the soil upon waking each dawn
It settles on me heavily and darkly
Though no one would be tempted to think
I am purely green
I do not have grass for skin or trees for legs
But I myself am a tree
Walking on fleshy roots, skin easily broken

I know I am not water or fire or wind
I brave the light of summer and the wind of winter
I die each autumn until spring returns and grants life
I am gifted with cycles
Fruitful years and barren decades
I have lived longer than many and I show no fear

My womb is a fertile crescent
The core of the earth and its heavy metals
Hold me in place as I move
Even when both feet leave the earth at once
They are brought back down again
As if to forget their temporary absence

I will never fly skyward or produce rain
I will never burn mountains bare
Strip the land of its nature
Stoically I remain earthbound, looking inward,
Reaching outward.

-GSS 2004

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