New Moon

 

 

I am tired of words.

They have no hands.

No mud gushing between their toes.

Can a man give birth?

Only to poems.

I am tired of the Word
that looms between my silence
and creation.

Is this why I scoop up three

gobbets of mire,
kneading them like dough?

I have abandoned “why.”
For no reason I slap one

on top of the other,

blow them dry with breath,

three argil clods vaguely shaped

like a woman.
She does not turn to stone.
Her hips move.

I don’t know why she has come alive.

I have abandoned “why.”
This exhalation has no significance.

Perhaps the musky sod
was already breathing

with an infinitesimal dance

of microbial loam daemons.

I give her no commandment,

“Be fruitful and multiply.”

I do not say, “Dance.”

How could I command a miracle?

No sticky wings of giant moth
or fallen angel unfold,

only breasts and elbows.

She gazes into her fingers.

Will she pluck debris from the swollen

stream of her eyes, uprooted trees and

cell phone towers, wind turbines,

granite slabs of fallen cathedrals?
Is she about to strangle her father?
Does her left palm throb with healing,
her right etched with runes
that hum before language?

I remember now.
This happens again and again.
We kneel before her in the mud.
This is what comes of Autumn rain,
the pregnancy of loss,
the new moon.