Omphaloskepsis

 
 
It’s the hole that’s not a hole, the cave
of the smallest childhood mysteries
and milky lint like the nest of a worm
who graduated to moth and fled
to eat the world. Can we not evolve
past it and its ex-purpose?
 
 
It’s been cut, pierced, banned, stuffed,
draped, flaunted. Seeing it unexpected,
on a friend, leads to liquored thoughts,
flighty desires. Could we enter it
and be new again, ignore the reality
of its unseen terminus?
 
 
And how is it a button? Vestibule, chakra,
chocolate cherry, apple cleft, shot glass,
goat’s eye. End of a balloon. Yes.
We are our mothers’ balloons, cut off
and flown like drunkard moths
to hungry openings.
 
 
 

Pamela Murray Winters, a native of Maryland, has published in Gargoyle, the Gettysburg Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies. Her first book, The Unbeckonable Bird, will be published by FutureCycle Press in summer 2018.