(From the beginning of human consciousness, women and men have known the Mother of the Universe by many names: Isis, Kali, Lilith, Demeter, Cybele, Artemis, the Black Madonna. An image of the Sacred Feminine, she comes to me as…)

The Big Black Woman

The Big Black Woman is a kick-ass kind of woman.
So sumptuous is she, so voluptuous, so deep-throated her big-bellied laughter.
She chortles as you cower, she picks you up and throws you back to Africa,
to that deep, that dark, that tangled jungle of your instinct and your passion.

She enfolds you in her large round arms,
she picks you up and throws you back to Africa.
She rolls you in her musky, musical fragrance, the scent of—
she picks you up and throws you back to Africa.
She holds you in her arms as she struts and swaggers down the delta.
She holds you and you slide with her, down the delta back to Africa
beneath the fertile crescent of her belly
to the warm, wet, moist mystery of this midnight cavern,
this mighty cave rampant with the heat
that sends you back to Africa,
to the lust that still is pouring through creation
like the rivers roiling down the delta.
She picks you up and throws you back to Africa,
the Big Black Woman
takes you deep and takes you down, takes you dark,
exactly where you dread and most desire to go
in your deepest, wildest, darkest thirsty dreams to drink,
she takes you back to Africa, to beginnings, to the power.

And tonight she looks around,
she sees her dark-skinned daughter
slumping shoeless on a hard stone stoop,
one baby at her breast,
the next in her belly,
blamed for the man-made inevitability
of being banished into a basement,
while white men and their well-heeled women
applaud welfare reform
over five-course dinners under chandeliers of gilt
and plan to spend the taxes they’ll save
on softer mattresses for gold-toned guest rooms
in second homes by the sea.

And tonight she looks around,
         she sees black
         she sees woman
denigrated, de-nig-rated:
as if down and dark are necessarily evil.

And what she says is: Ha. Earthquakes are coming.
Volcanoes erupting. Tidal waves crashing. Thunder winds storming.

Ha, she says. Your house is crumbling. I will pick you up and
I will throw you back to Africa, into the oceans, into the deep and dark and down.
You can swim in me, you can swim with me, you can strut and swagger with me.
Or you can drown.