Milkweed
It was dark in the pod.
It smelled of wood, decay.
We were inside for how long?
Time, like that, is something
closing. It was dark, acrid,
and there was no way out.
*
One day, the pod glowed
at the rim with a gold ray.
It was just the tiniest trace
of a world we did not know.
The ray brightened.
We kept still, cramped
like feathers filling a pillow.
*
Another day and all boundaries
blurred. Light filled the void. And wind,
what was wind but a song? Wind
lifted us and we knew nothing.
But the wind was strong, stronger
than the seeds of us, strung to silk.
We were little possibilities.
We were carried away.
Threads of our thoughts floated,
filmy, through October’s fog, rain.
*
We never knew what happened
to the pod that was our home,
the open gape, the womb-cave.
But we remembered the darkness,
breathing.
GILLIAN CUMMINGS is the author of The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, winner of the 2018 Colorado Prize for Poetry, and My Dim Aviary, winner of the 2015 Hudson Prize from Black Lawrence Press. Read more.
First published in The Shy Yellow (Dharma Pine Editions).