I Hear Thunder

I hear thunder trembling on the ground Lawford's cart is coming down the lane Contracting into pain Grumbling like a young girl Feeling her end of month pain again Crying in the embrace of her womanhood Passing like landslide under her feet The unsoiled moment soiling her grief Her fertility dripping away The next generation unfertilized Screaming at their death in her vein Wounding her existence For the fraudulent applause of innocence For how can I be innocent If I disobeyed the earth's need for replenishment If all my fruitfulness coagulated in blood Suddenly like melted ice is dripping Forget the blasphemy of the rag Man's commerce succeeding While my multiplication withers and die And the young girl writhing Snake-like across the contaminated grass We beg her not to cry Dulling the knife's edge of pain Slowing the decomposition of the lining Into fluid grains grating on the gyrating sore Bringing her offerings of herbal tea and balm Subduing her who will not subdue the earth To the absurdity of postponing my birth As if when the time for this poem is pass The poem to follow is the same Commanded by the thunder we should be ashame Instead we hide our association From Lawford's cart, the wheels tumbling Over the broken stones Over the callused skin of grim road Grumbling away into the gloomy evening. Grumbling