I worked hard for this body

I worked hard for this body
by which I mean I was carefully
threaded together into a slick and
joyous mesh,

the oldest Mother’s weave,
a frantic chemical web,
her fingers smelling of silt and the sea
spinning a body stretching up from
the heels of these clay feet.

The catastrophic split
and the terrible tear of cells,
the bursting and divine
divide.

I endured it all, before I knew
what it was to endure
or to have hands
lungs
and eyes.

I worked hard for this body
in the rich blood sea of my mother’s belly,
I grew my legs as the ancient seadwellers
grew theirs, and took my first
breath of air as they took
theirs.

One day, my hands and eyes
were thrust into the light,
as were theirs.

On to the beach we crawl.
And now look what we bear.





I worked hard for this body,
by which I mean I am here now
breathing in the breath of the dune which
is made of light and of dinosaur’s bones
of white and of whiter stones

which is made of Hatshepsut’s tears
my mother’s hair my sister’s tears and
my father’s hands
made of a thousand mountains, oceans,
baying dogs, howling cats and
shifting sands –

of the sky’s lustrous full cobalt -

the ground thick with flowered weeds
all tough, hard and pulsing
through the salt.