Origin Story

And in a hot second, channeling
her grandma at the stove
and her mother on the road, she said,
Don’t bless my heart:

I am a force to be reckoned with,
a flurry, an invisible militia
of moving air, merciful as a
whisper on a lily, fierce as a gale
on a prairie, calling up dust, creatures, houses
as I may.

I am a force to be reckoned with,
a seed underground. I am subversive,
small, inert, contained, waiting.
I am generativity.

I will fall into dark loam, living
earth, and I will not fear
death. I will die
in the soil, the nothing, the might-
be-something. I will slip away,
lithe, leaving carapace, membrane, hull

and I will
return. I will sprout
centuries in minutes, seconds,
tapping casks of water in the
belly of the world and swallowing
sunlight faster than
God.

I am not a bloom, trembling:
I am the wind and
I am the willow.