In Search of a Place to Be Born

Nature
subdivides
and, born, before our eyes,
the names of places, sacred.
Deer Run, Owls Creek,
Willows Weep. Naming
speaks as electric dreams
on waysides, signs
of time, immortal
in wood fires, posted
on wood stilts, wired well.
Where I was born still
stands; where stillborn
I was born;
still, borne, before
I was born.
Still in the waters
of a big river; I was born
in the blue-eyed rim-
water of a sea, inside; stilly
I was born and
I am still
born.
Outside the birth, well
beyond the birth-mills
where they make
love with haste, where
babes are made with haste
to make haste, there was
a place.
It remains, still,
its waning name alongside
scrub native to somewhere;
kudzu garland strung
on juniper, an oak tree, divine
maple. There is,
still, in a clearing, some
clear water, ample handfuls
of mud, full of
swimming polliwogs,
fallen wood, a puddle, a
pond of black water, a
place to be born.

-Eduardo Ramos