origins – Nancy Wood Literary Trust

When the Earth calmed down

from the long agony

of her waterless birth,

She spat Fire, and certain possibilities emerged.

The bones of animals,

the fins of unborn fish, and

the blood of scavenger birds

Were waiting for shadows to become durable

and for dust to recognize gravity.

From the ash of Earth’s spent energy

cooling moss crept forward.

Seas of salt ate up shorelines, and

rock defined the essential boundaries

Of ancestry. Fire devoured

land to make it habitable.

All along the shores and deserts

and mountaintops, everything

developed eyes and hearts

until Fire was finally satisfied.

When stars first appeared in the sky, they were lonely, never

touching, or becoming touched by what lay beyond their isolation.

They had deep eyes with which to examine the sinews of

The universe and secret ears with which to hear the struggling whispers

of plants emerging from the earth below. After a while,

when the stars were looking within themselves for meaning,

They noticed a field of yellow flowers swaying in the wind of a

distant mountaintop. These flowers were patient and unresisting,

some so small that the stars couldn’t see them very well,

But they knew these living things to be mirrors of their own vast beauty.

Thus stars married flowers in loving affirmation

Of one another, expecting nothing more than recognition

of their unimportant differences.

Why the Earth Spat Fire – August 2022