Birthdays!

   They are me.
   They are of me and they are more than me.
   They are two sweet sips of beauty
   steeped in the language of dreams,
   earth, sky, fog, clouds and undiluted blue streams of girl song.
   Their innocence sings of worlds I once knew.
   They are my first and second born in one birth.
   The first an airy indigo guru full of wisdom and sight.
   The second a solid ginger prayer bundle
   burning with an intense fire.
   They are two but more than two.
   They are my many poetic stories happening at once.
   I was once a simple woman with not much voice, a hollow bell.
   Motherhood struck the chord brought me forward with sound,
   inducted me into the tribe of poetic prayer tongue,
   transformed me into a holy roller of words and worlds,
   straddled me across the abyss of both pain and joy,
   marinated me in the juice of what my daughters have made me;
   a fierce mother Eagle, a Hawk, but mostly a Phoenix rising
   wingspan wide with the one true color, compassion.
   A poet mama bird feeding herself, her babies and others on words.
   So, when I speak of multiple birth, I am including myself too.
   My girl self grew from the food of woman talk
   and wise from woman ways,
   growing upward and round
   with the power of circles,
   embracing hearts, arms and hips
   with the carriage of large loads:
   babies, joy, and the dark root of sorrow.
   On this journey of becoming momma, mom and mother
   I have gone beyond bone
   the passage brought me back with a stretched soul;
   made me wide by my only two true epic poems,
   I am kept alive by their telling
   and my wings are flared with hope and redemption.
   They show me how in everything we do
   no matter what, we touch the world.
   I am a roughrock smoothed by kissing water
   raining double blessings down
   with the best of both earth and sky.

For more from Asheville, NC's performance poet Glenis Redmond, visit glenisredmond.com.