Urn

by Sharon Black

A woman is a water urn: empty, 
her lips burn. 

Full, she senses her unborn child
moving, and swallows fear,

sits perfectly still. This daughter 
will be born, and then another,

and another. It will be centuries 
before she cracks, before she steps 

into the fields, the roads, or climbs astride 
a horse, reads books, wears jeans,

drives a car, notices glass corridors –
stacks of them rising into the sky.    

There’s much to learn. For now, 
she’s almost glad of the sun on her back

as light leaps off the water’s surface 
then races off, growing smaller and more star-like.