4 Months After

Picture taken & poem written in Sonoma County (on Monan's Rill) on June 12th, 2017

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Tree with a thousand faces
Body of a woman
Broken and worn
Curved to perfection
Hollow and whole

Your green belongs to another
But you wear it so majestically
Your skin is smooth and so much more
Exposed, naked

I see your ravaged insides
I remember mine
Legs wide open
Turning myself inside out
The agony

Are you rotting there my lady?
Are you alive?

Now only my heart aches
At the distance between myself
And myself
The lost ideal of a beautiful birth:
Sliding my baby out of my slippery passage
Into peaceful waters
And warm awaiting arms

Ravaged instead
By the life struggling inside me

Nothing
                        Nothing
Coming to my aide

Where are my angels?
Where are my guides?
How does spirit deliver soul into body?

Cut open and pulled
Out of a woman-made hole

We surfaced under the fluorescent lights
Stunned by silence
For the first 9 minutes of your life
 I was numb for longer than that

Oh you long hollow bumpy stump of a tree
Bring me back to the mystery
Beneath your midsection something is hidden
I want you to hold me
Want to nuzzle up to your belly
And lose myself in your softness
Rest my head on your bosom
And hear your heartbeat
Ride on your hip and laugh wildly
(Just the way my baby uses my body)
And you can walk along with your curvy legs,
Sexy and lean
Like nothing ever happened
Like nothing ever died inside you
Like you are always the same as you were before
But I know you are more beautiful than ever
Radiant
Exhausted and aching