Things you see in her open arms

 are like tiny lives tunnelling; fibre optics

of puberty and motherhood, pulled to

in season, neon watchwords

to the inner heart

swelling, the bell of, the jelly fish -

the tides inside; transparent switches of mood.

Sometimes, sometimes,

she decides, the sky is better on its side

stripping her belly with yellow and black,

like cities from the mouths

of her sweet children, more than half

a dozen a day.

A bone of tangerine, the sun bent

over the rim, and into her

you fall; an ear shaped

in the rib cage,

almost home on the way,

and what she means to you.