Lean eye bone to wall bone,
thumb stone’s scars and fissures.
Draw myself into the narrow dark
into the lore:
Birthed from a molten core
bathed under six oceans, thrust
into turrets, wind washing dust
to the Gobi, cliff dust, my dust
Hint of damp. Once a slim straw
of water leaked from hidden lips,
fed the beans, kept the Anasazi alive.
My belly, the rockbelly
our motion placental.
I pull my eye away, cheek chafed,
lift my hand to the tenderness.
Lift my gaze to the cliffs
centuries of hard mothering.
Children hidden in her skirts,
love, a silent trickle from deep inside.
© 2019, Nancy L. Meyer
NANCY L. MEYER, she, her, hers: Avid cyclist, End of Life Counselor, grandmother of five. Nancy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work may be found in many journals including: Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Bitterzoet, Indolent Press, The Centrifugal Eye, The Sand Hill Review, Caesura, Snapdragon, Passager, Ageless Authors, The Asexual, The Writer’s Cafe. Published in eight anthologies, most recently Open Hands Tupelo Press and Crossing Class by Wising Up Press.
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