This is another poem, another kind of mood.
I was watching television one day
and they were talking about women and as often happens,
when you start talking about women
somewhere in the conversation they
begin to talk about witches.
And one of the things that was said then
was that you can tell a witch because she has 12 fingers.
Well I was born with 12 fingers, my mother
was born with 12 fingers and my oldest daughter
was born with 12 fingers.
So I had to write a poem about that.
This is kind of a mood poem I think.
I was born with 12 fingers like my mother and my daughter,
each of us born wearing strange black gloves,
extra baby fingers hanging over the sides of our cribs
and dipping into the milk.
Somebody was afraid we would learn to cast spells
and our wonders were cut off but they didn't understand
the powerful memory of ghosts.
Now we take what we want with invisible fingers
and we connect my dead mother, my live daughter and me
through our terrible, shadowy, hands.
Thank you.