Mine
1985
Lips of rock and tongues of rock
breasts and vulvas and lungs of rock
throats and shoulders of volcanoes
safe us here in womyn power
Ancient molecules, mountains evolving
boiled metal, cooled galactic
in all the colors of goddesses calling us
cryptogrammic soil, anasazi handprints
who trusts us to be gentle?
Who waits turning with stars in a footfall?
Who leaves us here to trust
slowly crawling chant to the colors
as light ticks away
& other lights dance through the music
membranes of memory un-gathered spin
You know how it is with womyn
we start to speak and something else happens
mountains from molehills
loops and shards
like the wild birds
circling for their lives in the wind
We are the clay that rushes in
they unbury drums, chalices, masks
easy to be soft or dangerous
I can take the shape of anything
devotion of trees, heat of July
tidal fields move through me
flesh of amazons feeds me stories
I reclaim all that ever was
reframe destruction, dissolution
will feel the light of green off leaves again
walking in fire, emerging to be glass
for forests of lives
surrounded by cliffs
in a landscape
that outdistances the sky
We have stood here before
in tiled courtyards of Old Europe
amid groves of clay pillars in Crete
beneath domes of Atlantis
temples in Africa, graves of beloveds
circles of stones and groves of oaks
riding painted elephants and
at coastal slave auctions
fires blazing and reflected in our eyes
The clothes we wore were different then
our names were different, and our bodies
we bear identical scars and nightmares
search each other out
our courage building in spirals ascending
We have always been here
facing our enemy
one measure of forever
un-
fading
Maybe
the reason womyn like precious jewels so much is
they remind us of planes of consciousness we’ve
lived on where
these were the pebbles.
Or maybe we are made of stone
We are turquoise, lapis, gold, quartz
molybdenum, dinosaur bones, outer space
mind and soul, mined and sold
for the enemy, for our blood
we endure
We are rock, not numb or dumb
feeling every moment of light and darkness
and the powers that rise to dip again
from the movement of our slow eyes, our booming hearts
we promise you, sisters
the end of their evil is closening
the ages are sliding a storm overhead
quickening
the unfolded order of yesterday snaps shut
opens a new fan
Metamorphic. Igneous. Composite. Incarnate.
we are pieces of rock stuck together from that molten heat
blasted apart in evolution’s explosions
and the birth of new suns
composite, igneous, metamorphic
We lounge with great divided views
we’re the Great Divide
we ache divided, slowly mending
where dynamite planted these straight damned lines
through our wide heart sisterland
We are huge glaciered mountains and gravel driveways
faith-filled mesas holding lonely beneath tons of shifting future seas
we’re the griddle desert, coyote effortlessly loping
we’re bedrock, wisdom
Metamorphic. Igneous.
Rock of ages
When stoned, we
write it down for recall later
Later ever after
and we watch our lives, their lives, your lives
bloom and fall
We are quartz, gold, dinosaur bones, outer space
Enduring, we wait.
The alienated mind returns to grace
remembers everything is everything
a childhood as lava
I add this breath
breathed by life, there is no death
nothing ever ends, hard to believe
in the endless terror
only listen to the wisdom of the stone beings
Fallen into the great Mothering soul of the world
the dark ecstatic metabolism
the spangled galaxies craving form
We are.
*I read that 85% of all the gold that’s been ripped from the earth is in bank vaults underground. Why didn’t they leave it there, inside the earth, to begin with? Because in the earth there are no boxes no bosses no keys or private property. So many ways to say Mine. .
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