Live Births

It is not actually you who dies- but

it might as well be. It is only that

thing to which you gave; your belief,

your nurturing, your very lifeblood.

A dream. Another. Your land. Your

people. Your faith itself. It doesn’t

matter who the victim was, does it?

Its death is a volcanic eruption; grief

the ash fall that choked your rivers,

took your forest, and burned your

house to the f*****g ground.

 

Time never fixed this. By itself, time

is pointless. Great loss requires rebirth,

which was never a thing of passivity.

It does not come gently. No shortcuts.

No anesthesia if you want a good

gestation. You will be its vessel, is shame.

Its witness, triumph, and redemption.

 

Outside forces will enable internal

processes- but you always act as the

doorway through which the watchmen

pass. Arrival is a messy business-

fluids and afterbirth and the inevitable

exhaustion of doing this thing over and

over and over. Again and again.

 

For a heart broken by life’s grand betrayals

was only ever healed by grander love;

whose birth is pronounced by the clay

you excavate from the bottoms of

swamps, great cliffs, underneath damp

and rotting things. You shape it into some

form before handing it off to the kilns of

a lifetime for firing by the hurts and joys

of ample worlds and universes.

 

Live births may be baptized in all

the waters of all the possible worlds; but

they are also forged in its fires. Nurtured

by its lands. Humbled by its skies. And oh,

those waters, those fires, those landscapes,

those atmospheres. How does the pendulum

shift now? Are we shaped by the love they

inspire, or the fear they provoke?

 

When you are elected to give birth, to

which direction do you point the compass?

Will you watch the moon rise with me this

evening; will you swim in the dark; can you

tell me what is reforming inside you, tonight?

What new thing will take its first breath,

extend its wings, wiggle its tail, shout its

first declaration; in the shelter of your strong

hands and open arms and loving heart and

grand mind; tomorrow?

Author's Note

This pieces had two inspirations. The first was a themed poetry activity, where we were asked to write about the topic "nacimiento," which, in Spanish, tanslates in to "birth" or "emergence." When I meditated on the theme, I was reminded of several recent conversations with members of my circle, regarding reflections on times of personal, cultural, and political transition. And how the poets assert that man must be fated to continuously give birth to his own self; how we go through periods of little death and unfamiliarity in transition stages. How we are ultimately responsible for what we gve birth to. All of these themes converge, perhpas badly, in this piece.

this was translated from its original in Spanish, which can be found here:
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/zorra_encantada/1876785/

picture is from a field project of mne where we teach people to create livelihoods based on respect for life and community