Snowmelt

It has been many years

since I turned my attention 

to who it is that will 

nourish me 

so that I may flower 

rather than weighing 

the inexorable duty 

of womanhood 

to supply the bread 

of sustenance to others. 

In my eagerness 

to be everything 

for all of you

I have forgotten myself

and so the earth 

around me is parched

and so the garden of my spirit 

has fallen into desuetude.

Now that it is raining again 

now that the zone of saturation 

is filling up 

I can feel the life 

rising with the thaw

brimming inside the well of me 

and I can feel the ice 

underneath our feet

retreating into nothing.

Under your sun-filled gaze

sensation is coming back 

into the winter of my limbs 

and the pattern of snowflakes

that had spread their fractal waves 

over every inch of my paleness

is warming into gold again 

as the blood beneath the surface

blushes in its rivulets.

Being re-born 

is almost as searing 

as the first birth 

every nerve in me is burning

like a web of light 

that lifts its curtain 

across the mountains 

of the night of my inner world

breaking open the 

fruit of the dawn

into discrete lobes 

of brightness.