by Michael Kocinski
Somewhere on Earth, the passing of a season
is a lifetime. You are an egg on the underside
of a leaf, or half of you is swimming upstream
and the other half is a memory lodged behind a stone.
Under a bright sun we await your birth—
you break out spindly or pour out screaming.
Sometimes your mother is the sun and she
fills your limbs with heat and your wings
with color and function. Sometimes your
mother is the sun, and her breasts are the knot
that tie you down to a clump of grass, cradled
arms or black soil under a fallen tree.
Before we spend our skins a final time,
or grow too small for them, we live beneath
or within a stained glass canopy,
and jerk against the spider’s web if we’re caught,
or dapple ourselves with sunlight as we
move through the small world looking
for new things to eat, another one like ourselves
to love, a home to start the cycle over again.
When the cold comes, leave, or freeze.
You can sleep under barks or leaves. Some
of us go to sleep and never wake up, it’s okay.
As we crisp and wrinkle and become a church
for new life to worship in, the Earth brightens
into white stillness, and you’ll rise as pollen,
golden motes floating in your mother’s arms.
[Check out Michael Kockinski's back porch advice]