I'm going to start out with this poem for my daughter, Rainy
Dawn.
I wrote it last year when she turned 13.
That's quite a year of transition for her and for me,
her mother.
I guess it signifies a time of letting go, going wild.
And so I wrote this to help get us through this,
and I think it has helped.
And it's called "Rainy Dawn."
"I can still close my eyes and open them
four floors up looking south and west from the hospital,
the approximate direction of Acoma,
and farther on to the roofs of the houses of the gods who
have learned there are no endings, only beginnings.
That day so hot, heat danced in waves off bright car tops.
We both stood poised at that door from the east,
listened for a long time to the sound of our grandmothers'
voices, the brushing wind of sacred wings,
the rattle of raindrops in dry gourds.
I had to participate in the dreaming you into memory,
cupped your head in the bowl of my body
as ancestors lined up to give you
a name made of their dreams, cast once more
into this stew of precious spirit and flesh.
And let you go as I am letting you
go once more in this ceremony of the living, 13 years later.
And when you were born, I held you wet and unfolding,
like a butterfly newly born from the chrysalis of my body.
And breathed with you as you breathed your first breath.
Then was your promise to take it on like the rest of us,
this immense journey, for love, for rain."