mother earth

Mother Earth
The planet had legs of sand
dry, furrowed with white
lines, tracks, dead and fallow.
The last of the rain nurtured
where her head met the clouds.
Things grew there, ideas and hope.
But the arms of her landscape
were almost without crops.
Her thighs, still green but seedless.
The waste land began at her elbows
White, flat ovals.
Hope was in the scythe, the scissors
that she held in readiness
when the crops returned.
And made her body whole again.