'All within the communities'

 

“Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities.  The singular cannot, in reality, exist.” – Paula Gunn Allen

 

Born in Albuquerque on Oct. 24, 1939, Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, literary critic, activist, professor, and novelist.   A member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, she drew from her people’s oral tradition while exploring Native identity and cultural heritage in her writings.  The most notable of her many collection were Life Is a Fatal Disease and America the Beautiful, published posthumously shortly after her death in 2008.   For Saturday’s Poem here is Gunn Allen’s,

                                                          Grandmother

Out of her own body she pushed
silver thread, light, air
and carried it carefully on the dark, flying
where nothing moved.

 

Out of her body she extruded
shining wire, life, and wove the light
on the void.

 

From beyond time,
beyond oak trees and bright clear water flow,
she was given the work of weaving the strands
of her body, her pain, her vision
into creation, and the gift of having created,
to disappear.

 

After her
the women and the men weave blankets into tales of life,
memories of light and ladders,
infinity-eyes, and rain.

After her I sit on my laddered rain-bearing rug
and mend the tear with string.