Blushing Birds

                  ( Ectopia: from the Greek ektopos,

                    out of place )

My restless daughter is changing:

a quaking storm

moves in her like a butter churn;

in time it will cause sweet cream to surface .

She is casting off selves,

crimson balloons freed from a roof

as blushing birds.

Against her tide,

I move in different directions.

I pull old selves to me

and remember now what I was

too busy to mourn.

I think of you--

pinkly clustered ovarian pearl,

slipping down a strand

towards my breathing womb.

Why did you pause along the way?

Like my restive daughter,

you would not stay

where you belonged.

you coiled in a fallopian tube

like a snail in circled shell.

There is no grave or stone.

There is this forking scar

beneath my naval;

at night I run my hand down its crooked spine  

and grieve you again and again.

My Ectopia, for you there will be

no sweet cream

or blushing birds.