Mountain Baby

The closing of terrible mortal things, the heat and blown stuff of people scattered,

picking their lives like refugees in flight, masked against plague and pandemic.

Efforts on all sides like the busy flies feasting on late fruits – too soft to preserve.

Our flabby selves doing our best with lies and half truths to cover our tails.

My mountain rubbed in copper tailings,

green with tarnish, dark with the cracked ore, dour as unsweetened chocolate.

Feast on this with rubbing eye intellectuals grading papers, smarting with the hurt.

Waiting for something impossible to pass, but like things tend to do, carrying on where placed,

nudged, wetted, dried, blown and buried.

Thank God for the compost, for the turn in spade of darkened earth,

her juices of late Summer to fortify the Spring.

The doula readies her towel and boils some water.

Search for selves better left for later generations or sure

in the sound of baby crying, new found self, clearly in the making.

The old fold their things and ready their drawers neatly.

Collecting dried flowers we talk of beauty, purpose and meaning.

Bottle bought or ready made in the collective shop, stamping out,

stomping about the next and the line and the losses,

Crimson cemeteries on Autumn evenings crinkling under foot,

and the bumps of the sidewalk catch at the stroller wheels,

the birds and squirrels quick to retort.

A thought full of glimpses crowded by things to do.