Descent

To believe she came first
stretch her imagination
backwards
to her own birth:

before her
there was a woman
she cannot see
breathing in this dark place.

She is traveling towards light
open sky, grass, trees, a leaf
into world from watery
non-world.

Now she must remember
the swollen river
she traveled down
(through) gushing waters

(not the dry dust & bone
he described)

to believe
she came first.

by Jennifer Boire, from In Our Mother’s Garden: Or A Place of trees.  Chapbook Published by Over the Moon Press, Montreal, 2003. Shared with permission of the author.