again. Are you not mother? That

is the question that must be posed

and not just to those who

work the world with their pants

less stuffed, with their arms

held aloft when not wrapped

round the chores and the children

and, yes, round the big boys too, who sooner

or later will come home crying

about having to do what they had to do.

But yes, also Sirs, same question to you.

 

It's not just the body that moulds

and anyhow the earth that births the him

and the her of it shall, in its time

— own and good — make a meal

of our segments, slurp us all up.

And, we presume, be disappeared

in her turn. Never fear. Know

that which lives as a question

shall be, is all

that can ever remain: how to birth?

And how to be born

again? And again. And