Succession (Edit 1)

[thegaslights]

When I carried you I felt like a mountain;
immovable skin on my belly, hot
radiating out from a center
mangled star.
 
I studied the violence to steel
for each tremor’s eruption,
but it was a lazy birth, and rebirth,
primary succession by countless ordinary cuts.
Then there you were: yawning screaming
Holy flesh laid in my arms for
a lifetime of tender reflection.
 
Oh, child, ever after has days –  
I watch, catch your first tumbling steps,
pondering lessons of my own
mother’s explosions.
I hear you rightfully sing of lush villages
overgrown with long futures,
and an indelible ingestible past
I didn’t know. I feel
the rough seeds I cradle
in my soft center, shake
for mountain’s burning ash, yet,
before your round eyes
how could I
imagine myself a mountain

When I carried you I felt like a mountain;
immovable skin on my belly, hot
radiating out from a center
mangled star, proving daily
my body and perception
were changed.
 
I studied the violence to steel
for each tremor’s eruption,
but it was a lazy birth, and rebirth,
primary succession by countless ordinary cuts.
Then there you were: yawning screaming
Holy flesh laid in my arms for
a lifetime of tender reflection.
 
Now child, that lifetime has days;
I watch your first rumbling steps
pondering lessons I learned
and never did. My soft center shakes
and turns to mountain’s ash; before
your round eyes, how could I imagine
myself a mountain? You sing of,
and belong to, lush villages
populated with long futures,
and an indelible ingestible past.
I stand to shape the ash,
clod on, lovingly
planting seeds. 

Primary succession is a scientific term about the re-emergence of plant life after it is wiped out (from something like a volcanic eruption, for example). Wiki for the curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_succession.