La Loba

 

My mother collected the pieces

one by one

in the desert, the sand and skulls

cutting at her feet.

The Bone Mother, they call her,

La Loba

La Que Sabe

the Wild Woman.

Piece by piece she collected

the bones of the wolf,

her ratty cloak sweeping the dunes

behind her, her weathered fingers

clutching those indestructible pieces,

never resting until each one was accounted for.

Patience, she’d whisper to me at night

My love, you’re going to need patience

as I lost count of the scars

as I lost another piece slipping

out the window toward the moon.

Once she found the very last bone, the paw,

she’d take them to a fire, lay them

in place, raise her arms, and sing.

Motion, growth.

She’d sing more.

A fleshing out, fur.

Arms raised again, a final praise

to something I had yet to understand,

and the wolf shot up and out toward

the horizon.

The wolf transformed into

a woman with long hair

of black and yellow and red and silver,

laughing she ran away.

Heavy in my head and empty-chested

La Loba–her voice the pitch of humming bees–

whispered all along as I emptied myself

for years into nights, starved and prowling

a barren forest for some kind of longing,

some kind of yearning deep in my body;

The One Who Knows told me

that I, too, would flesh out into

the real creature I am–into My Truth;

that I, too, am gathering,

gathering those indestructible pieces,

clutching the parts of myself to my chest

barefoot  beside her under that sky.

The wolf beats beneath my chest

I feel its speed and ease

its ownership of one’s Self.

Heat.

I hear a song.

I am standing at the horizon, my hair

in every color catching in my open mouth

as I laugh,

remembering my nature

remembering I had whispered to myself

all along in the pitch of a bee’s hum

that I needed to give myself time,

patience, and the love to gather.

We are our own mothers.

We are La Loba.