Dreaming Tree by Sarah Tallarico

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Umbilicus
Kelly DuMar


Your daughter is a dream in winter, alive
and unborn, rooted in your imagination,
a mystery you will never solve.

She will drink from streams of memory fed
by mothers she will know and not meet. Dreams
of your mother – her mother – her mother will rush
into the sluice and be the juice and spoil of her – her
nutrients and waste. If she is born it will be

in April. You will be more and less than a mother –
you will be a creator. You will nourish beauty
and neglect it. You will heal and do harm. You will
give all you have and never enough. You will be
an artist, a perfectionist, a failure. You will be
a tree of dreams dying in winter. She will be

a tree dreaming a daughter rooted in her imagination.
You will be a stream of memory feeding her dreams
and daughters, born and unborn. Everything you wish
her to remember and forget will rush into the sluice
and be the blood and breath of her – her nutrients
and waste. If she is born it will be

in April.

About the author:
Kelly DuMar is a poet and playwright from the Boston area. Her poems are inspired by images and she facilitates Writing Truth & Beauty workshops based on this process. Kelly's chapbook, "All These Cures," won the Lit House Press Poetry Chapbook award and will be published in Sept. 2014. Her poems have appeared in dozens of literary journals and her plays have been produced around the US and Canada. Visit her here.