Stone Woman Gives Birth To A Child At Night

When I get back down to the truck with my backpack I dig out my keys and here I am back in America It was only one night in a tent, alone on a peak, so quiet I might have actually been nowhere I never meant to pretend there's another world apart from this one we're in but I was briefly adrift in a night sky before being re-immersed in this endless et cetera Now I remember the news and the names and who I am and where on the map I went I could see the whole horizon the Earth bending off forever then I plugged my dead phone back in the old cacophony rushes in Awash in privilege, we hold our meditation retreats out of earshot from the world's bombing and cries This August is mercifully free so far from the end of world smoke filled forest fire skies I crouch by my truck's sideview mirror and look close at the folds of my scowling face through the dust and I think "Am I just another in a long line of doomsday sayers feeling this apocalyptic weight?" Isn't an end and beginning married, embracing, birthing, clearing out space? Last night I read a confusing sentence in my headlamp light: "A stone woman gives birth to a child at night" Does it mean an empty womb brings forth an empty child? empty crying empty night sky and that baby is I