envelopes

The Envelope

by Maxine Kumin

It is true, Martin Heidegger, as you have written,

I fear to cease even knowing that at the hour

of my death my daughters will absorb me, even

knowing they will carry me about forever

inside them an arrested fetus, even as I carry

the ghost of my mother under my navel, a nervy

little androgynous person, a miracle

folded in lotus position.

Like those old pear shaped Russian dolls that open

at the middle to reveal another and another, down

to the pea sized, irreducible minim,

may we carry our mothers forth in our bellies.

May we, borne onward by our daughters, ride

in the Envelope of Almost-Infinity,

that chain letter good for the next twenty-five

thousand days of their lives.