The only mountain in this whole region:
the pregnant mama at the farmer’s market.

Her veiny vines touch the past and future.
She, Lilith, scoffs at the tiny tables,
and hunchbacked peppers, and arthritic squashes.

She revels in her laughing stature.
To hell with pale plums and stressed-out peaches!
The fruitless eggplants rise up—but quiver.

Inane Chicago, you are Atlantis.
Skyscrapers, like so many corn cobs,

collapse and crack by her mammoth toes.
She drinks the lake and naps in the prairie.

The pregnant mama is just pretending.
She wears a planet, and feels its pulling,

its almost-falling, its fruit, so different
from sterile apples grown for urban hippies.

The fruit is born, but to be birthed yet;
the human tree does not know its children.

The pregnant mama is a child, spellbound,
and walks through ages, through distant orchards,

and climbs the world’s tree for a simple cherry,
and feels it ripen into a globe.