Today's poem is by Dayna Patterson

God the Mother Speaks of Xenia
       

I AM the children sleeping under mylar in a Texas warehouse.
I AM the fathers lifting toddlers to their shoulders on our journey
to safety and rest. I'm safety and rest. But I'm mostly the mothers
who'd rather not lug the heavy memory of the twelve-year-old boy
cut to fit in a sack, ditched on the neighbor's steps. I hold his ghost hand,
a pale flower. Some call us vermin, an infestation. We're waiting
for recognition's spark, milk of kindness, hoping for something to hope.
Even a goddess like me needs birds to perch in the soul. Even I
require feathers, the tune that never stops. Don't look for me in the guards,
or their guns. I'm not in the false borders, the fenced miles or razor wire.
Haven't I taught you better? Even the body arrives by crossing
over. Sperm into egg. Then uterine guestroom. Then cervical gate.
Each life a light-chip, hard & bright, I slip into like second skin. So,
I will walk with, as, in them. My names rhyme with exile & asylum.
I wear boots, steel-toed. I wear running shoes. I wear these cracked, bloody soles.

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Copyright © 2024 Dayna Patterson All rights reserved
from Best Spiritual Literature: Vol. 8, 2023
Orison Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission