Say licked clean at birth. Say
    weeping in the tall grass, where
        this tantalizing song begins,
    birds perched on a crooked branch
over a grave of an unending trek
    into the valley of cooling waters.
        The soil’s thirst, lessons of earth
    unmoor the first tongue. Say
I have gone back, says the oracle,
    counting seasons & centuries, undoing fault
        lines between one generation & next,
    as she twirls sackcloth edged with pollen,
& one glimpses what one did not know. Say
    this is where the goat spoke legends ago
        in the ring of fire to deliver a sacrifice.
    To feel signs depends on how & why
the singer’s song puckers the mouth.
    Well, I believe the borrowed rib
        story is the other way round, entangled
    in decree, blessing, law & myth. One
only has to listen to nightlong pleas
    of a mother who used all thousand
        chants & prayers of clay, red ocher
    blown from the mouth onto the high
stone wall, retracing land bridge
    to wishbone. My own two daughters
        & granddaughter, the three know how
    to work praise & lament, ready to sprout
wings of naked flight & labor. Yes,
    hinged into earth, we rose from Lucy
        to clan, from clan to tribe, & today
    we worship her sun-polished bones,
remembering she is made of questions.
    No, mama is not always the first word
        before counting eggs in the cowbird’s
    nest. It begins in memory. Now, say
her name, say Dinknesh, mother of us all.