Womb
to womb
beauty to
beauty,
crow
insists I
awaken
to my position
woven by oak
Begin with water slightly warmed
here, let me dip your finger
mixed with two teaspoons of magic
disguised as yeast for the sake of awakening
My mother and grandmother
chewed on bitterness like pungent tobacco
staining their breath, blackening
their teeth. As if in a temple
Any root will do as long as it has lived a full
enough life nestled in earth-belly
has been a wide enough cistern for the making of sugar and bitters
torn seams, clear
cut forest, scorched
city, rubble where once
a breast lived – I
remember
as in the yoga class
feeling hands
shift my outstretched arm
to re-align with my hips
and when I opened my eyes to
acknowledge the help
there was no one there,
how sometimes
the adjustments
are subtle, a shift
of weight, of word,
a sigh, a release
of thought, feeling,
anger, hurt
and sometimes
it is more positional,
a postural habit,
bones and muscles
making do
constricting form
over 36 years
of bending forward,
listening, attending
as if in prayer
as with Jacob
who became Yisrael
that is to say all of us,
falling back sometimes
into his old name
When once I was
a doorway
two in one
becoming two