the moon was once earth,
a daughter whose leaving broke land to pieces.
Here is the scar of rupture,
this ocean of ancient rain
that still rises
and falls with the moon’s turning dance
around her mother.
This is what it means to be mother and child,
to wear the skin of ancestors,
the mother’s stolen lands
carried on the face of the other.
Earth tells her,
return all lies to their broken source,
trust in the strange science of healing.
Believe the medicine of your own hand.
Believe that emptiness is the full
dance between us
and let it grow.
It is a road of deliverance
sure as the path Moses pulled
between the red, uncertain waters
and others followed.
Think of the place
where a continent divides
and water falls away from itself.
whose knife made two lives
where there was only one.
She had mastered the way
of beautiful partings.
It is true our lives
will betray us in the end
but life knows where it is going,
so does water,
so does blood,
and the full and endless dance of space.