A History of Planetary Motion
By Atom Ariola



We would do well this night

                                             to remember

the blood       the strength that began this life

           song pulling   amniotic

light   inside those tissued shores,

           where bones and pain find their way home

this night      of placental dark

            we would do well to remember its growth

you can hardly see

                                            Among the bedrock    and alluvial waters,

inside her, a kind of breathing still pushing out,

           against the swelling of her body and the rusted gravity of morning―

we would do well this night to sing

                                                        the image of the mother,

to hold

           in our teeth the rope the silence the soft wet sun

                                  new flesh pushed out of the

                                  place we all began split sky and storm

                                  cedars blown flush against the hills

proteins folding and unfolding deep.

                                             It’s not so hard

to see her, image of my mother, the spill of birthmilk around

                      rags catching the naked words

                                                                   she threw back to the air in that blossom

                                                                   of cells,

notice: stainless steel scissors, the table against the adobe wall,

                                  blue pale of cold water, cotton blankets

frayed at the edges from too much wind, where midnight’s colors

ate through after those years.

          Do you see the threads of birth pulled taut

in the birthroom at the top of the crooked stairs,

do you recognize the smell of death deep inside that life:

                      albumen, maeconium, prepuce, cuneiform,

                      say it again,

remember the sacred alphabets of the body,

cerumen, vulva, pelvis and thistled rose,

                                                        we would do well to keep going,

                                                        to cross the garden to where

                                                        the pear trees lean

and ask for nothing,

                       for shadows falling gently

back toward the turning earth.

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