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BIRTHSTONES i. It was like uncovering the foundations of the world And digging them up, one stone at a time making way For the great stalks of summer: sunflowers and corn. Like lifting bricks from a buried kiln, chips of plate, Ballast from the hold of a ship, astonished by how far The scattered cairn sank beneath shovel and crowbar. ii. Those days when you were pregnant and hungry For the distant sun, you lazed in whatever light You’d found would bathe the warm fleshly sculpture Of your shoulders and breasts, canted pelvis, the great Belly rounding like a boulder on the fertile earth— One stone at a time, like touch- and blood- and birth-. 29 ...

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