Birthing the sacred woman

See how she’s grown

From empty-vessel innocent

To full-bellied, tired and spent

What fire awaits her body’s glow

To push bone against bone in that slow

Transition from woman to mother

Embodiment of power no other

Will love laboriously into being

A small, sacred body fleeing

Red womb house of berth

To milk, mother, Earth.

Featured Image: Sasha Freemind (Unsplash)

Samantha Kolber has received a Ruth Stone Poetry Prize and a Vermont Poetry Society prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mom Egg Review, Poems2Go, Tiny Seed Journal, Rise Up Review, Hummingbird, Hunger Mountain, Minerva Rising, The Meadow, and other journals and anthologies. Her poem “Year in Review Haiku” was featured on Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition in 2019. She received her MFA from Goddard College, and completed post-grad studies at Pine Manor College’s Solstice MFA Program. Originally from New Jersey, she lives in Montpelier, Vermont, where she coordinates author events and marketing for Bear Pond Books and is the Poetry Series Editor at Rootstock Publishing. Her chapbook, “Birth of a Daughter,” is forthcoming from Kelsay Books (Sept. 1, 2020). Read and listen to her poems at her website, samanthakolber.com.

Feature Image by photosforyou from Pixabay