This is from "Geography of the Near Past."
For Arl in her sixth month.
Cool beneath melon colored cloth, your belly.
A joyous ripening that happens and happens that
gently takes root and takes over.
A miracle uncelebrated under an autumn dress
that curves and falls slowly to your ankles.
As you busy yourself with backyard gardening,
humming, contained, I think of your tongue
at peace in its place, another kind
of fruit, mysterious flower behind two lips that
open for air, and for exits, and entrances.
Perhaps, if I placed my hungry ear
up next to a cantaloupe or coconut for hours at a time,
and often enough,
I'd hear a fluttering or maybe a music almost like the story
I've heard with my ear to your belly,
a seashell history of evolution personified.
Your womb is a room where it's always afternoon.