(Click here for text of Klassen's poem.)

Fertility like the verdancy of a deep clear pool
can hold you captive. Mother Earth finds no words for it
although she’s created meadow, sparrow, birthed
one thousand mornings and evenings. She knows

breathing deeply of fresh grass pungency cannot
encompass this giving: a conception of ying and yang
held behind moist lips.
The swelling of the earth-belly

grows shoots of being. She’s pleased
with the unique character of each fine extremity
held somewhere between fragility
and strength. She begins defining

identity: should it be innocent or presumptuous,
creative, simple, logical? She loves the beating
of this still-pure blood seen
life surging thickly, through the transparency

of delicate stretched wrists. She’s allowed
the capacity to shout and run
to condemn and wail
and to suck the juices of bitter fall berries.

She’s mastered the combining of energy’s meridians,
flesh to flesh bring new flesh,
a child’s hand, reaching impatiently,
ecstatically for Mother Goddess breast.