After the Storm

After the storm she laid her naked body
down in wet grass, closed her eyes,
the heaviness gone from the air,

from her life. The breath of the earth
warmed her skin, filled her lungs.
One by one the animals reappeared

from the woods, from their hiding places
deep in the woods, to nervously nuzzle
the strange thing, lick a shoulder or thigh.

But still she lay, unmoving and quiet.
And she lay and and she lay for a hundred years,
while the grass grew over her limbs, breasts

and hair, took her body into the earth,
into the deep, sweet earth of the world.

--- by Jonathan Attrill