Earth's Birth
for Amber Autumn
The mother feels the pressing roundness rotating as it crowns.
She is blizzard-peaked in pain ‘til jagged edges drop down
to smaller hills and gentle mounds portending the arrival,
but the pain erupts again.
She sweats oceans and cries storms. Life-lava explodes
as she tears expelling the child whose plates shift to pass.
—Melodie Bolt, Flint, MI
