MATERNITY

I look at the hill
and the little slice of rising moon.
I see the broad hump,
the more tempered ridges of the hills
in the background
telling me the story
of the slow and drowsy rousings
of my beloved Earth,
who stretches and yawns,
making and unmaking blue plains
in the dread flash of a hundred
volcanoes.

My Earth
just her yesterday
just million years past,
she turned in her sleep
and traded one surface for another.

Where ammonoids once fed,
diamonds.
Where diamonds once grew,
trees.
The logic of moraine,
of landslip, of avalanche.

Dislodge one pebble,
by chance,
it becomes restless,
rolls down,
in its descent leaves space,
another pebble falls on top of it,
and there's height.
Surfaces.
Surfaces upon surfaces.

The wisdom of the Earth,
my Earth.

When life,
surface upon surface,
has become completely encrusted
with experience,
you know everything,
the secret, the power, the glory,
why you were born,
why you are dying,
and how it all could have been
different.
So you are wise.
But the greatest wisdom,
at that moment,
is knowing that your wisdom
is too late.

You understand everything
when there is no longer anything
to understand.

The wisdom of the Earth,
the stirrings of my Mother.