AN INCANTATION FOR MY GRANDMOTHERS

Earth heavy

Corn mother

Great Raw Woman

What you must have been in childbirth,

birthing with the force of two  hundred hurricanes.

Crouching low, arching high,

pushing out squalling life and catching it

in two fiery, rough hands.

Rocking, rocking,

face like the moon over ravaged land.

I see you each day, rivulets of water

running out of your body across scorched fields

and the red clay front yard singing orange zinnias.

Your daughters are feathers

tossed by the same hurricane winds,

falling lightly

even half a continent away.

Quiet strangers riding fierce city rails,

stepping unseen through snow-hushed streets.

dancing to rain drums on urban roofs.

waking to treetops in aerie lofts.

Watching the moonrise in glowing glass,

your figure we spy in junkyard windows,

in mirrors under fluorescent lights,

and down the long alleyways, waving incense at the moon.

We feel the earth beneath a thousands tons of steel,

will know its rhythms when all has passed away.

Even city towers gleam with your life.

Skyscrapers spark starlight

in the eyes of the Ancient Ones.

© Copyright 2006 by Glenda Bailey-Mershon. A version of this poem appeared first in Jane’s Stories : An Anthology of Work by Midwestern Women (edited by Glenda Bailey-Mershon), and also in sa-co-ni-ge/blue smoke: Poems from the Southern Appalachians, by Glenda Bailey-Mershon, both available from Jane’s Stories Press Foundation.

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