Belly

The belly's big egg signals

wait, wait. The cat

won't sit anymore on the crowded lap.

Dark center line, seam

of a bruised peach. Navel,

that quaint reminder, now

extrudes, a brown seashell whorl,

an ear, the belly

listening, testing foreign air.

The belly is a hard

hill, and strange,

full of seismic murmurs. (A globe

has its tides; blue

whale rolls

languid in its own bay.).

These kicks regard me

as a dog its bed.

Warm layers of tissue receive

the thumps of a nine-month dream.

My waters stir

with lightless rowings, unremembered.

Emissary from a former life,

the cat abandons all.

Leaping to the sill he stares

where the spring sun erupts

a blaze of tulips:

open, open.