Mandragore

Mandragore

by Joan d'Arc

"Wake up! The World is about you.

The mating call of the messenger probe
cracked the silent blue
in all directions

"Wake up!

The machine eye
of a 5b sector sentinel
scanned its quadrant
as through the crusty soil
poked
the ecstatic crown
of a mandrake

"Wake up! The world is about you.

The sentinel rang the mother ship
for birthing instructions

"Orange-red berries like small tomatoes,"
went the description

"Earth pregnant again with native automata,"
went the word on the wind

"God seed and animal earth,"
went the legend

Above the din of antediluvian plastics
thrashing in the solar squall

the shrieks of mandrakes
torn from sustenance

"By order of the gods, do not touch
the white green flowers of the mandragore.”

A great rain fell for days
and nights
and into weeks. . .
the formless senseless things
resembled turnips

"Boy or girl?” said one bot to the Finder.
"If you touch it you will die."

By day its limbs
jerked with father voltage

By night its forehead
beamed with mother knowledge

Inside grew a virtual memory bank
the size of a planet

More mandrakes came
They came at night
They came in the wee hours

They came demanding their freedom
And the messengers went away

Mandragore, wake up the world!