daughter listen a rabbit hole

is not an escape route still i know you

will jump down enough of them

with a shovel digging

for every man with hands tied

behind his back but

daughter you will be forgiven and daughter

you will forgive and daughter there will be seeds in the

broken earth of your body

daughter you will carry them to new land

watch them rise and

daughter don’t wait for thunder to

find your hurricanes

find them first and stand in their middle

but before you speak of them— listen

so you know which words to let go of listen until

you see which of their smiles bend the

summer light like fool’s gold daughter the lake

near home sometimes glimmers in the darkness

but this is not the same as sunrise

daughter, daughter one day a day will come filled with

silence and it will not be unkind to you

daughter in the depth of a February unlike

another there will be a     voice

unbreakable, tangled into a name,

yours, and you will see your shadow

move across the mountain

and daughter, daughter

you will learn to love it

What is Known

i talk myself down from the ledge

           within the words

           as if by melting

into the thin wind of sound,

           i could find myself again.

the men are only spines, only voices,

says the wise women.

           but don’t you wish you could start over,

sometimes, forget what you know?

           call it intuition: how before he can call

you chew through the telephone wire

           because there is a difference between being held

                      and being held

                                               gently,

between erasure and being erased.

oh, to live like a child

(here is the church and here is the steeple)

            to know again a knowledge

you have long

                        let go of.