DERIVATION

I am digressing.

I am part of the beginning. I am the sun
curled and peacefully rising from night,
uncrinkling slowly, turning the moon's crater soft,
inducing the moon's crater potent, into many:
I am the collection of stars
falling from my son's ceiling, coming
unglued, cracking my arms behind me to
hold on; shooting out straight before me
one by one, my bodies naturally
weighted and healing; I am
the woman at the table still serving, filling glasses with water
like third world wives and daughters who
push uphill with pots on their heads and hips, the river
on their backs; the derivation of water:

Where is it? Where did it
begin?

I am the water
inside my mother's belly, inside her mother's belly,
inside her mother's belly beating, coiling,
my face unseen, already forgiving, eagerly waiting; eventually
slipping the blue mercury head of existence first
through the riverhead, the slick jelly shell of my woman,
its soft newborn knees
finding their place in the earth.

--L.A. Costa