Page 133 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

Notes:

I was inspired to write 'Crow Mother, Her Eggs, Her Eyes,' when I found the painting by

that name, created by Meinrad Craighead. Ms. Craighead subscribes to a belief in

animal guides. In my neighborhood around the same time, I kept seeing this coterie of

crows near my house, and I put together the physical crows with the metaphysical ones.

The physical world we perceive and the mythical realm we create are tethered to each

other. Out of the first arises the second. Myth serves our hunger for meaning. As poets

and artists, we participate in the making of myth and how it sustains spirit.

Long Ago, they captured our city

The city of our mothers, who built it out of

each day's straw, the raucous calls of jays, the wings

of the cormorant flapping languidly over water,

the many earnest ants carrying bits of

ground out of the ground, liberating them

from the dark. It didn't matter that the ants

were blind, they'd been bred to their task.

It didn't matter whether the mothers were beautiful

or gifted, tall or talkative or wholly wise.

It mattered that they spoke the words

everything obeyed, the fish, the newts

who could choose so many forms, the bulky

water buffalo, the barren rocks. All

understood each other and even though

there was killing and there was dying,

there was also understanding of these things,

and forgiveness. This was the beginning,

the story that everything knew, and the ants