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Deborah Miranda's picture

This blog post originally appeared on the blog Bad NDNS.

I wrote this poem as a reminder to myself that we are never alone, that within us are countless years of experience and wisdom from our Ancestors - if we can just remember to ask for help!

 

Our DNA is a map made of stories.

A genealogy of stories.

A storytelling festival, featuring

ancestors and those still in the womb,

and those looking at us through eyes

not yet made from stardust.

 

When we tell stories we tap

an ancestor on the arm, ask

her to speak.  We take the hand

of a child, let our fingers intertwine.

When we tell stories we time travel

in a temporal wave that crashes

and crashes on the shores of our flesh.

Damn, we are fine

grains of sand, swirling kelp,

all the luminescent plankton that ever swam!

 

When we tells stories, skeletons dance

in dark museums, clappersticks crack

like lighting deep in unmarked graves.

Abalone beads shine like oceans.  And I am

an abalone bead, drilled true, strung

on twisted plant fibers,

one of many glowing jewels

on a strand that spirals round

and around.  When we tell stories

I know where my beginnings spill,

drunken coyotes keening over broken moons.

 

Tell me a story.  Tell me how it happens.

Let me tell you a tale your bones

can't forget.  We are beloved bodies

of work dancing a spiraled flightpath

made of words, ink, tongues.  We speak

a language that does not contain

the word for dead, or end,

or lost.

 

Profile photo by Kevin Remington


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