Summer Light 

2019
Ellen Marie Hinchcliffe

I know death’s last blue breath, light traveling back 
a thousand starry bursts into the black night 

I know each green seed fall into earth’s velvet universe 
birth unfurling under our feet

I know old songs and dreams and cassette tapes 
recorded over, layering drums and ghosts

I was raised in a city
I was raised going camping in Ohio and Kentucky 

to run with a pack of kids for hours through the hardwoods 
copperheads and skunk, daddy longlegs and streams 

to run through my neighborhood alleys bright with laughter and snarls 
dandelions breaking concrete, for my bare feet

that was goddess, that was love

now my daughter is four 
she talks to everyone everything, all life

she drew a picture for my dead Mama and put it on the ancestor altar
two friendly round figures one inside another with those starfish radial 

thousand finger suns, that’s me she points to the figures, to the trees
to the light, to the rain, to the shadows, that’s me 

I know the ancestor’s patient voices, shaking golden pollen 
the electric humming of my daughter’s touch in sleep

we are you she murmurs to the river, to the streams 
to the bees, to the dust motes, to the blue sky, we are you 

remember the living and the dead are dancing round and round
remember it does not end, winter is a season, death is a season too  

we are the season of living 
we are now

remember goddess and love are the same, another song to sing 
for the way summer light instructs you, to trust again in living.