a mystical contemplation of one’s navel
yet my daughter seems more interested
in my own belly button than her own

jabbing her finger into clinging darkness
as if to say I came from here and somehow
so did you—and the new baby kicks

at his amniotic seabed—a quick pressure
causing waves across the globe’s surface too—
buttes jutting forth and buckling just as fast—

I pet her hair remembering our early days
when her skull was an Earth of tectonic plates
and her molten soft-spot boiled thoughts

in such violent primitive cries—thoughts
not fully formed—but how we eventually found
our own rhythm as she slowly moved

toward a Pangaea—and now she settles herself
upon my stomach as she drifts to sleep
the way a pheasant crouches close to the ground

right before an earthquake—it can feel it coming
before the rest of us—somehow can sense
that its whole world is about to ripple in upheaval

and I contemplate my belly button—wonder
at how the earth recycles itself—how we share
the word mother—already shifted from mine to me

 

***

Jennifer Met has work published or forthcoming in Gulf Stream,Frogpond, Apeiron Review, pacificREVIEW, Moon City Review,Haibun Today, the Red Moon Anthology, and elsewhere.  She lives in North Idaho with her husband and two children, Mira and Harlan.