If ever I've heard Earth speak, it was in that moment.

Early August: a windy hilltop in western Wisconsin. We've called to her, our beloved Earth of many summers. She stands here in our midst, her hands on the swelling curve of her belly, and her look to us is love.

She cries out. She is in labor now. She crouches in the birth-squat and we dance for her. We labor with her in her birthing, until that final long-drawn cry of triumph. Our circling stills. In the windblown silence, she draws forth from beneath her skirts the newly-born, the god-loaf. We cheer them, him and her.

She stands and looks upon her child. Her love is all for him. She cradles, kisses, suckles him.

Then, raising her head, she looks up, looks at us. She lifts him over her head, showing him, as at a Naming.

“My children for my children!” she cries.

And she tears him in two.

We take and eat.

In mingled joy and sorrow, the harvest begins.