Yesterday she was nowhere to be found
In the earth or under the earth.
Suddenly she is all here - a bright soon
Of a tomorrow in earnest and potluck joy, embers and pyres, iris and the merriment of ochre.
A star groomed by outer space - spilling wet ash
And fissured out by the tailored saw of the wood.
Now something is stirring in the smolder.
We call it a girl.
Still wowed.
She has no idea where she is.
Her eyes, chalcedony stones, explore ripening doomsday and an ivory moon rock.
Is this the world?
It confuses her. It is a great numbness.
She pulls herself together, rousing to the new weight of things
And to that maternal figure nuzzling her, and to her down burrow.
She rests
From the first infinite shock of light, the empty laze
Of the curious and their curious questions -
What has happened? What am I?
Her ears keep on inquiring, blissfully.
But her legs are impatient,
Mending from so long nothingnesses
Her tiny hands are restless with ideas, they start to try a few out,
Swaying this way and that,
Grasping for balance, learning fast -
And she's suddenly upright
And stretching - a giant hand
Strokes her from top to toe
Perfecting her outline, as she tightens
The knot of herself.
Now she comes to -
Bold, beautiful - Argentina
Over the weird world. Her nose
crimson and magnetic, draws her, consciously sounding,
A petite yaff, aimed towards her mother. And the world is warm
And gentle and softens her daze. Touch by touch
Everything fits her together.
Soon she'll almost be a woman.
She wants to be a Woman,
Pretending each day more and more Woman
Till she's the perfect Woman. The immortal Woman
Will surge through her, weightless, unbound, a twirling flame
Beneath silver gusts,
It will coil her eyeballs and her heels
In a single outlaw fright - like the awe
Between mortar and firework.
And curve her neck, like a crocodile emerging from the placid pond
Among lilies,
And fling the new moons over her shimmery banner,
All the full moons and the dark moons.
Booming, ineffable delight.
