The Ground Star

Feel it in your belly
and hunker down.
Your strength anchors to the floor.

Your legs are as strong as trees,
as supple as jaguars posed to leap.
You carry the earth in you
as though wading below its visible surface.

Within but not easy to find,
often lost when it's needed most,
the center holds you together,
draws like gravity—the ground star.

I didn’t find my core
until I carried an infant,
leaving that first dream for another.