The ancestors want you to know,
you are not required to carry their pain.
Your mother did not spin the web that nets you,
you wove it from your own desire.
Yesterday’s rain won’t nourish this flower;
the new sun drank last night’s tears.
Your grandmothers are singing for you
to birth your own unbearable happiness.
Your grandfathers’ bones are praying for you
to hunt the sweetness in your own marrow.
You think you must stand like a warrior
in the withering crossfire of your father’s blood.
But what wounds you is the wavering blade
of your mind, slashing the past and future.
If you insist on making reparations, plant
a wild pine; let it be a tree of Presence.
You cannot pay them for the privilege of breathing,
for awakening this solitude of beauty.
They need no libation, they thirst for no offering.
They are not hungry ghosts,
But earthworms who luxuriate in loam,
shards of sunlight lodged in magnolia blossoms.
Do not carry them; they do not carry you.
They bear their own grief and laughter.
The past is vanishing smoke, the flame is now.
Be christened with this breath; name yourself.
You sleep alone in the chamber of your ribs.
No one else enters and leaves your lungs.
A mother kissed you, a father held you;
you owe them nothing for this.
They did it for themselves; now let them
be about the business of their next childhood.
Father your heart, Mother your body.
Hold and kiss new sparkling babies.
Give them your grandmother’s name if you must,
but not as a weight, not as a brand on the hip;
But as a prayer, a promise of astonishment
for what has not yet been conceived.
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