Fontanel

MARY MOORE

FONTANEL

The dome of the baby's head crowns, egg-shell

blurred with birth-fur so sheer the fontanel

gleams through, itself lit from the inside, rose-

colored light of the lamp the breath-mother lights

as she lies on the rose of her blood; light fed

by the omphalos, its humming in the red

twilight when you floated under the hill,

in the rope that still tows you (ghost-limb,

still aching) toward the under-belly's pucker, kiss

or pink zero the cosmos leaves to witness

what joined us, once, each to each. Blood-smeared,

an egg or stone or bell, out of furred lips

like a monk's tonsure, under light's round eye,

emptied like a sac of dark water, you cry.