seeking tiny pearls across the night sky.
Tail between my teeth, bubbles filtering through gills,
every breath a shift in the cosmos, a search for an opening.

In the beginning I was a seed in a puddle
that first grew eyes and then a tail while the moon cycled
through many stages of filling from empty to complete,

advance to retreat, like ocean tide and back again.
Seasons changed from bud to flower to brittle leaf
to barren branch to the hum of a heart with the resonance

of the Earth that began knocking, which echoed
like a drum on the door of my mother’s body.
Roots danced below her feet beneath the wolf moon

until there was howling, then I appeared like a dancing bear.
I, too, have gone from flower bud’s bashful shimmer to fleshy fruit,
filled with roe like a pomegranate rich with jewels and iron, wisdom

and salt. Soon I will become a wispy seed husk bending
to sunlight like a coyote’s howl arcs upward to a sky round
and pregnant as my belly was this time last year when the road

was washed clean by spring, where there was a seed
inside a puddle that first grew eyes and then a tail and a heart
could be heard humming with the resonance of the Earth

until it began knocking
and the knocking echoed
like a drum on the door of me.