The Birthing
The Birthing
My mind like a hawk returning
to the tree where I was born,
its branches bare, shorn
of leaves,
rising gnarled and alone
from an empty landscape:
A world hazy, almost bright
with a pale subtle light,
timeless and eternally still;
and consciousness diffusing,
awareness slowly fusing
in a vague beating of wings.
Far below and still unknowing,
where in strangeness now am going,
there a river darkly flowing,
time and motion never slowing.
Closer now the sounding roar,
swollen life runs wild and more;
raging whiteness –
fierce, hypnotic, blind –
twisting through a narrow gorge,
ever drawing in my mind.
Then the closing dark that sings,
then the densely strange of things;
far away the loudly screaming,
milk of life like pain
from swollen breasts so softly lain…
as, by instinct, the beaked lips
angry, living,
curving toward their fullness –
cruel, thirsting, unforgiving.
– Chidananda Burke.
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