The Winds of Orisha

   I
This land will not always be foreign.
How many of its women ache to bear their stories 
robust and screaming like the earth erupting grain 
or thrash in padded chains mute as bottles 
hands fluttering traces of resistance
on the backs of once lovers
half the truth
knocking in the brain like an angry steampipe
how many
long to work or split open
so bodies venting into silence 
can plan the next move?

Tiresias took 500 years they say to progress into woman
growing smaller and darker and more powerful
until nut-like, she went to sleep in a bottle 
Tiresias took 500 years to grow into woman 
so do not despair of your sons.

   II
Impatient legends speak through my flesh 
changing this earths formation 
spreading
I will become myself
an incantation
dark raucous many-shaped characters
leaping back and forth across bland pages
and Mother Yemonja raises her breasts to begin my labour
near water
the beautiful Oshun and I lie down together
in the heat of her body truth my voice comes stronger 
Shango will be my brother roaring out of the sea 
earth shakes our darkness swelling into each other 
warning winds will announce us living
as Oya, Oya my sister my daughter
destroys the crust of the tidy beaches
and Eshu's black laughter turns up the neat sleeping sand.


   III
The heart of this country's tradition is its wheat men
dying for money
dying for water for markets for power 
over all people's children
they sit in their chains on their dry earth
before nightfall
telling tales as they wait for their time 
of completion
hoping the young ones can hear them
earth-shaking fears wreath their blank weary faces 
most of them have spent their lives and their wives 
in labour
most of them have never seen beaches
but as Oya my sister moves out of the mouths 
of their sons and daughters against them
I will swell up from the pages of their daily heralds
leaping out of the almanacs
instead of an answer to their search for rain
    they will read me
the dark cloud
meaning something entire 
and different.

When the winds of Orisha blow 
even the roots of grass 
quicken.