Seven months: the navel-gaze

My belly button is a fairy ring just about to turn
into wet clippings and mulch a drain
grout half gone that sucks and gurgles
as the basin empties
my belly button is a muddy worm run
just before it rains and the whole thing sinks in on itself
the perforated flank made whole
by too much too much

My belly button was a dime store notion
punctuation between gastro and intestinal uro and genital
my belly button intact is the last gasp of before
when a slowing metabolism and slouch economics
what called loudest from the cupboard
were the roundest
of my concerns

My belly button has become a third eye winking
from beneath shirts riding up pants slung low
my sage on high and my carnie crystal ball reader
my belly button has become my keeled over canary
and my abandoned mine shaft while you sputter
turn over several times daily
like any old engine

* * *

This is the first poem, only slightly modified here, that I posted over at Taking the Brim_Took the Broom, an on-line poetry project whose list of contributors is both dauntingly - and reassuringly - large.

Speaking of being daunted and being reassured, it's almost time for May Day again...

Last year, four Winnipeg and web-based poets and I committed to writing a poem a day and posting it to a blog. When the month was up, we tentatively committed to doing it again the next year.

I've just found out that one of the other key members won't be participating...and a second stalwart is more into making (praise-worthy and hopefully award-winning) films these days than most anything else.

Also, despite my current spurt of energy and concurrent poetic output, I'm not sure I'll be up for much more than being knocked up, given that May is my last month in the office before vamoosing for 50 weeks and will also see me to eight and a half months.