A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs br but I've never seen wheat in a pile. br Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots br make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek br as a seal hauled out in the winter sun. br I can see you as a great goose egg br or a single juicy and fully ripe peach. br You swell like a natural grassy hill. br You are symmetrical as a Hopewell mound, br with the eye of the navel wide open, br the eye of my apple, the pear's port br window. You're not supposed to exist br at all this decade. You're to be flat br as a kitchen table, so children with br roller skates can speed over you br like those sidewalks of my childhood br that each gave a different roar under br my wheels. You're required to show br muscle striations like the ocean br sand at ebb tide, but brick hard. br Clothing is not designed for women br of whose warm and flagrant bodies br you are a swelling part. Yet I confess br I meditate with my hands folded on you, br a maternal cushion radiating comfort. br Even when I have been at my thinnest, br you have never abandoned me but curled br round as a sleeping cat under my skirt. br When I spread out, so do you. You like br to eat, drink and bang on another belly. br In anxiety I clutch you with nervous fingers br as if you were a purse full of calm. br In my grandmother standing in the fierce sun br I see your cauldron that held eleven children br shaped under the tent of her summer dress. br I see you in my mother at thirty br in her flapper gear, skinny legs br and then you knocking on the tight dress. br We hand you down like a prize feather quilt. br You are our female shame and sunburst strength.