Hilde Weisert
Belly
Is this what you think of when dying?
The white tunnel not to Heaven but
where you came from, a belly, your source.
The hands guiding you, your mother’s hands,
fussing to get you ready one last time?
Hilde Weisert’s poem ‘Ars Poetica’ in MER 14 went on to win the 2017 Gretchen Warren Award (New England Poetry Club). Her 2015 poetry collection, The Scheme of Things, was published by David Robert Books. Her poems have appeared in Ms, Cincinnati Review, The New York Times, Plume, The Cortland Review, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, etc., and anthologies including Choice Words (Haymarket Books, 2020), What They Bring: The Poetry of Migration and Immigration, IP Books, 2020).