The
only mountain in this whole region:
the
pregnant mama at a farmer’s market.
Her
veiny vines touch the past and future.
She,
Lilith, scoffs at the small, clean tables,
the
short-lived peaches, the swollen squashes.
She
revels in her laughing stature;
to
hell with pale plums, and stressed-out peaches.
The
fruitless eggplants rise up—but quiver.
Inane
Chicago, you are Atlantis.
Skyscrapers,
like so many corn cobs,
collapse
and crack by her mammoth toes.
She
drinks the lake and naps in the prairie.
The
pregnant mama is just pretending.
She
wears a planet, and feels its pulling,
its
almost-falling, its fruit, so different
from
sterile apples grown for urban hippies.
The
fruit is born, but to be birthed yet;
the
human tree does not know its children.
The
pregnant mama is a child, spellbound,
and
walks through ages, through distant orchards,
and
climbs the world’s tree for a simple cherry,
and
feels it ripen into a globe.
