Pleiades
We pass through the portal of the Pleiades
to get our feet, fall
through many wombs,
some say the moon, ancient ingénue
Hands hold this string of
births like beads, some say an abacus
Ancestors count
Lightning strikes a silk cotton tree,
splits it open
We spill like silt over the lip
of Alkebulan Ozieri Nuraghe Kuban
Divination map read by lightning
a million mothers dancing
toward Chochenyo land
Names are waves,
bodies, doors
We glow, oracle bones, dug
and blown
Moon, first knuckle
flung
When stones were soft with dreaming, we pressed
the petroglyphs in
Altai, great blue luxe,
calm currents faces of land
Oracle without practice is lost
Birds have feet
We are visited by a place.
It wants to travel, too.
Unbind hair, child
glide to the bottom
of the Black Sea,
hurtle headlong, waves of
mud over baked clay
Caucasus caves, burrow heave
equine up the Steppe. Breathe
deep as a descendant
of Orunmila, Oya, Egbe, Egun
Brigid, Sheela, Macha, Danu
Hands hold these strands
a Silk Road opening