4. bending in twilight

feel your blood
its power a stampede lifting
the fiery bath of its nutrients

feel your pulse
a cascade of blood offerings
from the body you grew inside once
lathering your heart’s first thirsty beats
in promises to keep you nourished

feel your blood memory like nesting dolls
each cup of velvet prayer, unbroken cloth
of plasma, salt and protein of your specificity
folded in the long river of creation

you are every blushing ache and seasoned
lip speaking descendants splashing the
clearest pools of their legacy

feel your breath
its steady pull of oxygen into carbon
slipped beneath the rustling tongue
of each green growing thing that bows
its loving mouth to renew the caress of
your exhale

this molecular pendulum of forming and
reforming, coming and going through each
soft set of lungs sharing this earth remembers
catching a breeze to chase the sun’s revolution
in your oldest ancestors 

the same molecules sounding the flute of
your prayers, once plucked the possibility
from the cusp of their future

feel your water 
swelling and receding, gathered like oceans
in the conducting arms of the moon, every
droplet a galaxy of memory of every other
droplet it has nested it’s alongside, the long
branches of space and time stake their stories
in the muddy tributaries of your tissues, in
incantations of hope tipping over each fresh bowl
of grief

this dewy matrix of generations, blistering cavity of
intention, this heap of liquid and pulse, body of
holy heat and reaching, belongs here