Number One Daughter

When you were still just a little matzah ball
Simmering in your mother's cauldron,
Diana, the Huntress, spoke to me
Through bronze lips,
Standing tip-toe at the top of the stairs.
She said, Give the child my name
And I'll show her what women did
Before the patriarchs
Wrote their schoolbooks and dictionaries,
When women's words flew
Burning from their mouths like comet-tails,
When women's words were fireflies
Playing tag with the stars,
Before the patriarchs drew their maps
And erected their chain-link fences,
When women were bears
That swallowed up rivers,
Cats that slipped through night-windows,
Owls writing their stories in tree bark and sand,
Before the patriarchs castrated the gods
And painted fig leaves on children's eyes,
When the kundalini serpent
Slithered from every woman's vagina;
An electric eel that zapped the body
With a zillion volts of God-energy,
When the tops of women's skulls
Were open like skylights
And angels stirred in knowledge
Like instant soup.

When you were two,
You ran through the house,
Naked and dripping from your bath,
Giggling and squealing like a tiny forest animal.
When you were two and a half,
You drove out of my life
In the back seat of a car,
Your little arms reaching for me
From the window.
But Diana made a few phone calls,
Pulled a few strings,
And brought you back to me.
Now, sometimes, Diana squeezes
Through the taffy of my dreams
Holding a mirror.
In the mirror, I see you,
My number one daughter,
Running under the pale moon,
Smeared with war paint,
A crown of bright feathers
And a necklace of spiral shells,
Your feet gliding
Two inches off the ground.

David W. Aronson