The Final She
Today I’m sixty six ferocious years deep
and no one ever put blue cornmeal on my tongue,
or passed me, swaddled, around the circle in the arms of tribe.
Who asked for the baby-god’s blessing?
Who bent to whisper dreams into my new fuzzy ear?
Nobody there on the shore of the river, forest, ocean, desert
to drape that mantle of future worlds, or
to imagine the magic that hovered then, shooting out of my spiky head
like a fireworks fountain, like a spinner of fortune
and still the sparks shoot out and flame up
a Catherine Wheel
waiting for the Others to know me
to see me with their eyes of trees, clouds, magpies
and still i shout out from the autumn meadows
acrosss that golden threshhold of October.
today i ran into little Edie, so bright, so confident
musta been that cornmeal
and i know that i DO want to stick around
watch us all grow up in this little town
the babies unfurling like these dahlias
massive, heavy and soft that i hold in my hands
one after another like a calm, relaxed birds
snd i ask for their blessing.
Oh ancestors—
keep sprinkling your version of blue cornmeal
from spirit worlds and
i will baby-bird catch it on my old-child’s tongue
mouth to the sky
—it’s my birthday, again
pour that mana inside me— it’s never too late
i can stay right here and wait
patient
and surrounded by the mystery of you.
Here then is a prayer for YES to the imagined ancestors, who’s photos I found in my mother’s things.
A prayer to Russian/Ukranian/Moldovan kin, fixed eternal in sepia. We’ve never met, but can you feel your DNA spiral unwinding in my mortal chest? Oh, give me your Yes, nod your spirit heads. Grace me with applause like in a darkened theater when i bow and the lights are in my eyes but i hear you out there breathing, I’m so open to your sending, love and energy bending the air, lift me, praise me like that. Tell me I am good, that you are pleased, this is my prayer. I’m here to ask, to burn the karma of my family in this, the only cauldron of my life—this exhausted body.
With my laser sword of mercy and justice i stand in my mind, not alone, but surrounded and here for a purpose: not procreation or replication, no multiplication of this animal code. i wanna crack the code and lay it shattered to rest, compost to feed the forest that will grow from our heads when I’m buried, the last one standing, buried feet first, naked, with a tree planted on my head. Root through my thought-less skull, feel my relief, ladder my spine like a vine as what I was disintegrates slow, like the waves of a huge bronze gong struck by a brown-robed monk. Melt me. Nothing to fix or to be done. For the multitudes of generations, I’ll gather a forest, a garden, a waving bouquet of hydra heads, this one journey of struggle dispersing at last. This great ungathering. Just a voice saying YES to clouds and peaks and to this pen, this lonely only journey.
Follow me today, the dark sunken eyes, the babushkas and black coats, the lives i never knew who spat me out here, emerged from all your denied desire, those frozen dreams, that holiness foreclosed.
I do not come from a people who say Yes easily. Say it—YES— to me, today.
Anti-traditional woman, un-martyred, impolite, fighter for rights you never dreamed of. To Me —stuttering effort at freedom and joy, guilt ridden doubter, here yelling louder, anarcha-parachute catching the light, glittering here in the oldest sun any of us has ever known. It’s Me —your possible glory, a story machine, Me— elderly animal, student of herstory, glory of history, yes to me who no ancestors imagined, not ever. You who never dreamed of me.
Or did you? Was there one, once, long ago in Russia, in whatever was before Russia, one who thought beyond the pale, some Jewish ancestor on some move down a trail of an endless winter I’ll never suffer, buffering babies, your life packed up on your bony half starved back, schlepping, trekking away from millennia of nightmares, did You dream of Me?
‘Cos I’m the last one standing. The final Chezar in the Land of the Lost Chezars — General Oak leading a clown troupe, being a lasso, a cosmic tour guide, wrangling my parents, demented, in diapers, in their black wheelchairs, barely conscious, to their next to last home. Not counting the cost and how I’m lost. Just navigating in a blindfold this story that rarely says Yes. Will you say yes now? To me?
We swam through the fire; I stand in the fire —this body as fire, burning in here, born to be claimed by a race of the deeply un-sure. The too-big brains combing too closely all the hairs on the head of this life. Leave some of those tangled.
The tangled knot of string massed round my head to be wound at some future time gently into a smooth ball at the center of my mind and there to find one singing yes. I am here to burn karma, to burn through all this negativity and doubt, and be born perfectly into this finally spacious, ringing sky. I am the fire that surrounds us all. And then, like you, I will be Space.
Oh, ancestors, buzzing like flies trapped inside an amber of extreme negativity. All the no's circling like the umbilicus was around my throat, like ropes choking off every single yes in The Old Testament, in Russia, in Israel, in The Bronx. Keeping me grasping and far from contentment. Branded with this challenge, i come. Me, watched by dark eyes shining out of mountain peaks, out of clouds, out of language. Me, edge-walker, big talker, map-less quester, sky god bester, dreaming my Being into life.
As I shed, strip, shred karma with this laser sword, imaginary, as you are, but present today, as you are, everyday, watching from inside shadows and pine tree needles, your eyes fill the clouds, you know me.
Me, the final She —quitter of lineage. She— deliberate terminus, exit from this glass circle cage; She— rager, on the road with her sword drawn, She—the last chance, final dance, endpoint of all these stuttering efforts. She — the milk-pod seed glittering in autumn’s light, guilt ridden last call in the night, one more breath to get it right. She wandering, wondering about the meaning of life, silken warrior, worrier on a spiral journey, passing those dark eyes again and again, feeling life opening on perfect seams to a greater view. From the nowness, a split, a tear and the dark eyes everywhere saying Yes, saying, well done, saying at last a way thorough, chanting Peace.
And know that when I get that yes, peace will descend like the milk I never gave anyone. The vague peasant crowd will shuffle forward, drop their eternal burdens to drink, to rest, at last, to pass, to pass away from here, to lay the suffering down. I call the future forests to come rise up as we lay it all down, all our hearts leaves in the shining fresh morning, the new dawning. So I’m waiting. Send it into my fire mind, my mortal chest, I pray across time for that yes, send it now.
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