Blood To The Bone

I was not born in a hospital.
I was born by the earth
And the sky
Converging into
My mothers womb
And the drip of
Swollen rainclouds
that made their way past my mothers tongue
And into my unfinished veins.
In them, the african red
soil in which my ancestors
grew their crops, distilled
Into the iron of their worn hands.

I am not a child of a sick place
But of creeping fields that
Wind like emerald snakes
Beneath the eye
Of my brother bird
Or wind in dusty furrows
Above the tilling heads
Of sister worm, of cousin beetle;
Who feed as brother and I feed
In the same completely
Different way. I am a child
Of man, daughter of sky and
Scion of earth.

I am the blood to the bone,
Not the body.