Sunday, October 19, 2008
I Met an old Woman
I met an old woman
who looked beyond
the years of living,
scattered among stones,
grain,
and living between
ashes, reeds,
forgotten things.
She took my hand
in hers.
bebe, bebe,
she whispered, then I
was standing under
a splash of stars
spreading from a center
of the womb
of hidden and swollen
satrs.
In her touch,
she displaced
memory rooted
and routed along
a trail of tears,
from which
spring roses
born of thorns
and deep red bloom.
Survival is this,
she said,
biology speaking a language
unspoken by stars
whose light
has long gone
back to the exploding
dome of the sky.
Entrails
of light, each
seeping into
new and wet
beings and blessing.
We can trace the trajectory
of a spark, of birth
of life, of death.
Here it ends
when it begins.
Bebe, she smiles,
you look so like my own.
A motherless child
sees oceans of stars
in her eyes,
laced within
the shining sorrow
of a long foreshadowed
unfolding prayer.
Albuquerque
10-16-08
