that a world was made by songs, dreams,
and in our own world, the spin of another day,
that a woman god emerged from a lotus flower
and a man god was created in the image of a human,
that light was created by worlds
and all was formless void
before there was land
and the shining woman came up from ocean
out of the mists
or was made of the rib of a man
or that a clamshell opened
with a woman standing full-born,
and she gave sun to wheat.
First ocean, dark root.
We know, in some, there were betrayals,
a woman giving birth
in a place of animals,
the child falling into life
among the lowing cattle.
What grace,
born among the animals.
I think of a whale emerging tail-first
from its mother,
a foal, its dear hooves swimming into the world,
and that a mortal child
first opens to the world with a blue eye
that will darken in time.