Mother

Mother has many names.

Anak Krakatau might be one of them,
Or Uttarkashi or Qinghai,
Haiti certainly is.

She's the mother that swallowed
Maui into her womb,
the mother that disarmed Karna,
who led Oedipus to sin.

She plays pranks too,
in that cheerful way unique to her.
We find strange names to give them
- tsunami, hurricane.

Kalki is another name
we've given her, for when she
will be an old woman
looking for some kind of elixir of youth.
Perhaps some quack will mislead
her to find it in our blood.

She has a heart of gold they say -
pure, molten lava,
that sometimes erupts on her skin
like a ripe pimple.

She loves nothing more
than the sound of babies crying -
orphaned, bloodied, hungry, dying
their carcasses feeding hyaenas.
But hyaenas are her children too.

But she is the green mother
who feeds us, clothes us,
protects us from the sun's
ionizing radiation,
we came from her loins,
which is where we go.