Watch Me

White cows in the lightning

left through a torn seam of the sky.

Mothers are at tables crying

but pay no mind.

This year I was suddenly old,

a mother,

and without a single cow to my name.

But I heard about the woman

who found an old hand in adobe

and how the doors of her house

opened all night,

so I know even my hand

has its own life

and my heart never believed

the end of anything,

not to mention the shank

which keeps getting ahead of me.

I won’t weep at tables

at home or in cowboy bars.

I am done with weeping.

The bones of this body say, dance.

Dance the story of life.

Mothers, rise up from the tables.

Watch me, I will dance all our lives.

These bones don’t lie,

just watch.