BURNING BUSH
From babyhood I have known the beauty of earth--
I learnt it, I think, in the strange months before birth,
I learnt it passing and passing by each moon
From the harvest month into my natal June.
My mother, the dear, the lovely I hardly knew,
Bearing me must have walked and wandered through
Stubble of silver or gold, as moon or sun
Lit earth in the days when my body was begun.
And then October with leaves splendid and blown
She watched with my little body a little grown,
And winter fell, and into our being passed
Firm frost and icy rivers and the blast
Of winds that on the iron clods of plough
Beat with an unseen charging. Then the bough
Of spring came green, and her glad body stirred
With a son's wombed leaping, and she heard
Songs of the air and woods and waterways,
And with them singing the coming of my days.
And nesting time drew on to summer flowers,
And me unborn she taught through patient hours.
Then on that first June day, with spices blown
Of roses over clover crops unmown,
And grey wind-lifted leaves and blossom of bean,
She gave her dear white beauty to the keen
Anguish of women, and brought my body to birth
Already skilled in the sculptures of the earth.
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