A spiritual crime to
abandon a woman's
culture that flourished
here because a little
girl with buffalo nickels
and mercury dimes
hanging from her braids
fell on a pottery shard
that took her eye.

Mother Clay, a consequence
of survival and timely
motivation.

When the women climbed
out of the wild, crescent-shaped
ravine, they marveled at the
exotic orange, red, and purple
clay.  They believed it was a
sight of pilgrimage.

It was a land they soon obeyed,
where spiritual law reigned, and
this address did not give with
one hand and take away with
another.

It was the advent of a cash
economy, a quest for stability.

Of course the financial benefits
wouldn't be seen for months,
maybe even years.

It took several months to
even build the beehive kilns,
then even more months to build
symmetrical, sturdy pots that
could hold their own in the
marketplace.

The women founded, named,
and sustained Mother Clay.

Some were looking for a
hideaway, others searching for
a communal land where they
could live with their own kind,
work, and raise their children
with a spiritual pulse, and see
as far as the eye could reach,
hues of sepia, turquoise, pink,
orange, red, purple, and gunmetal
gray.  Mother Clay.

I have suffered from abandonment
more that I could ever suffer from
the loss of an eye.  Choking back
the tears, I cried out in heated
emotion.  They made me lay my
wound against the cooled beehives,
then two-hundred women holding
red-handled shovels buried the
earth ovens with their superstitious
nonsense.

Those kilns still stand!  It would
change their lives forever and
many lives unbeknown.

Authors Note:  This is a poem of
excerpt from my next novel to
be released, BLUE CORN WOMAN, of
which Tarot By Sage cards were
illustrated.


Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist, brainchild of Sage Sweetwater Creative Properties, flagship of Stone Creek Woman