Your radiant gaze
belies your violent birth—
a cataclysmic collision
delivering you from Mother Earth
into her synchronous embrace.
Asteroids pummeled your young face
as lava cracked open your eyes—
Imbrium and Serenitatis—and forced
the smile of Nubium and Cognitum.
You were precious to your mother,
shielding her from solar winds as she
nurtured her atmosphere,
tugging her primordial soup
back and forth to salt life
upon her terra firma.
Now, as you grow older
and somewhat more distant,
you still stabilize her Goldilocks tilt,
regulating her ebbs and flows,
calming her mood swings
as maturity and abuse take their toll
on her temperate temperament.
And at long last, you reveal
your greatest secret, water
frozen at your southern pole,
holding out the promise
that you will help the dwellers
of graying Earth
reach for the stars.
—
Anne Gruner is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line publications including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Honeyguide Literary Magazine, New Verse News, Humans of the World, Spillwords, and Written Tales. Her fiction and non-fiction can be found in Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Third Flatiron’s Rhapsody of the Spheres, Persimmon Tree, Constellations: Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Hippocampus Magazine, and others. A former CIA analyst, Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers. www.annegruner.com
