Genesis
Aria - Song of Everything by Ruth Calder Murphy
Genesis
From one hand, she flings a shadow, from the other, a star.
They burst apart into the night.
Worlds collapse in their wake and black holes worm like corkscrews.
She’s standing on a mountain top at the bottom of the sea,
breathing pearls.
Her lungs are coral reefs and her heart an anemone.
She wonders when the ocean became infinite…
Somewhere at the frayed edges of the universe,
everything comes full circle and collides -
the star is smashed to smithereens
becoming planets and comets, mountains, oceans and streams.
She screams. Birthing a universe is full of pain.
She knows this changes everything.
She weeps - the first rain ever to fall on her belly and breasts, her wide-open thighs:
the hills of her gestation - as everything is born.
There’s birdsong somewhere on the peripheries - a Genesis; a dawn…
Sighing onto the air, realising it’s not water anymore,
she juggles gases and predicts what colour they’ll burn.
Nammu is birthing herself and a tide rides in her wake -
the whole universe galaxy-flecked and nutrient-rich,
inscribed on a placenta and sliding to the light of day.
She’s every woman now - who ever lived and ever will -
imagining worlds
and creating them from the fabric of her soul.
In her heart she holds a shadow and a bold, bright star.
She becomes a meteorite - and flings herself
to brilliance the heights of her becoming.