Birth of a Body

She walks down the aisle of her own birth.
The canal is ablaze with fire
And talks of heroism.
She has returned from the underworld
Coming out of the womb
She unfolds herself
Like a moth escaping a cocoon.
The blistering closeness of skin
Is slit open as she pours out
From Mother

Empty at first,
Now full out in the open,
She takes her first breath.
Soul rushes into her
The beating heart is alive
The eyes see
The brain digests
She has arrived
Carrying the ends and beginnings of dreams
To be woven thickly together
In a nest of survival and belonging.

You know who you are when you arrive home,
To jump out of the nest is frightening
But there are those whose hands you can walk upon
Until you can stand up by yourself.

The birth of a baby is the birth of a human,
The arrival of a new gift for Earth.
The baby carries ancestral starlight
She never lets go
Of who she has become
Through the passage of birth.
Her body remembers
Being cocooned in safety,
Then suddenly thrust forward
Into motion and action.

She emerges as a lotus
Sprinkled with dew.
She is beauty
She is a babe in swaddling cloths
She unfolds herself limb by limb
Escaping darkness
And thrusting her body
Into the light.