And we name our daughters Dorcas
or Tabitha. We remember gazelles
gentle in their gliding over tall grasses.
We put our hands on woven cloths
and we bind one piece to another
with needle and thread.
Because our daughters are beautiful,
they sing to the moon,
and we protect them from lions and jackals
by teaching them quiet and hidden.
When Dorcas died, we women
gathered up the robes she had been sewing.
We washed her body, cried tears onto her pale skin,
preparing her for other worlds.
Dorcas, our beautiful gazelle, had dreamed herself too fast
and high over stars and bird nests.
Women wove the soft cloth to wrap around her,
and then we left her.
Alone in a room with God, anything can happen.
In her death, Dorcas sang to the water
until the spirits heard her longing
and allowed her return, to finish her earth-water-song.
Dorcas was born and she died and then she lived again:
this is how some women have come to believe in impossible things.
Sometimes women sing to Death
and sometimes Death wakes up.
We name our daughters Dorcas or Tabitha,
for gazelles, not for saints or goddesses.
We want to nibble the leaves of lilies.
And so we name our daughters Dorcas
or Tabitha, because we want life to be gentle
with tall grasses and gliding spirits
and we want to believe
that our daughters are indestructible,
and soft and free as gazelles.
Born into forests, rivers,
gray sky in her eyes.
She watches for heaven, a blue heron in mud;
she traces stars with tiny hands,
she looks inside apple blossoms and rhododendron flowers,
daffodils and azaleas, and they look back at her.
In a world of thin, glass mirrors, she becomes a girl
blocked from glimpses of blue mountains expanding into nights cracked open—
white streaks of stars.
Years teach her
to paint faraway skies onto her face,
blue eyelids outlined in thick black night and golden glitter,
bright wildflowers pressed against her lips.
When she pauses to look, her face becomes canvas.
She paints two thousand nights
before settling on looking only how she feels:
two parts trees, one part cloud and sun.
She leaves the mirrors
searches for recognition outside in
the backdrop of rain, tree, fern and stone.
The earth helps the woman.
The forest remembers her name, casts its green shadows onto her eyes.
She longs to become that
beautiful,
a face echoing cedar in rain.
With water-sky and fire-hands,
we drag the sun,
a walrus, to the other side.
We pull, laughing and singing,
uvai, uvai, uvai.
The wind, our voices,
The wind, where we came from.
Our feet, wrapped in sealskin, walk like bears
over the ice:
What’s here today
will be different tomorrow,
the stars echoing the day,
aye, aye, yek.
We live in a city of 10,000 healers
we live in a city where the sky is a healer
the red mountain is a healer
and the moon rising over the mountain
and the stars moving round the moon
and the cottonwood trees and the sage
and creosote, coyotes, and crows.
We are surrounded by healers
and still we need more healers
We live in a city of strangers
kind strangers and confused strangers
we have memorized the difference
between fireworks and gunshots,
a city with stories on fire and rain that needs to fall.
We walk out the door saying, Goodbye and Be safe.
Because this is a city of hurt people hurting people and hurt people helping people.
We carry the earth in our bodies
like we carry gallons of water to leave in the desert
because we know
because the rocks know and the sun knows, and the wind knows
that hurt people hurt people
and that is no excuse.
We live in a city of 10,000 healers
and still we need more healers.
We light candles and say,
Blessed are we who have been wrong,
who have been shattered and put together again,
blessed are the angry and the meek
and those running down the hillsides
in search of the river,
for we shall know God.
Thanks to Albuquerque Poet Laureate Mary Oishi's "Poets in the Libraries Series" through which "Albuquerque, New Mexico" was first presented via One Albuquerque Media GOV-TV 16, Nov 12, 2020. Thanks to "The Paper" Volume 1, Issue 4 (October 29-November 4, 2020) where this poem first appeared in print.
Child, the nights here are mostly stars, hardly dark at all.
Lying in bed, the blue glow shines through the windows,
invites us to fling open the doors and run back to the night.
I think we must agree the night hidden inside walls is fraught with human shadows pressing down dark on our hearts,
while the night outside rises, expands;
Infinity in silver-crescent hands.
Child, don’t worry, we can rest outside, here;
We will watch the sky and know the hour
by following the Big Dipper’s pouring cup.
Let us revel in this shining wilderness
of stars laid bare over the desert we sleep in–
Every time, after the coyotes sing,
it falls so quiet,
it is not possible to know
if the humming in our ears
comes from inside us
or the heavens all around.