Rikuama

I Am Squash Girl,

the one who is always

pregnant-looking.

See My big round belly,

My long skinny neck,

My little pointy head.

(What's wrong with the child?)

I play in the water,

Mother East's daughter.

I float and I laugh.

I play in the sand,

dig My toes in the mud.

I curl My green hair

round My restless fingers.

I wind tendrils of vines,

green rings for My busy fingers,

twisting them around.

I wind the tsi kuri, the colorful eye.

I honor the four directions of earth,

wearing their colors wound up on sticks

tied in My hair with a ribbon and feather.

I'm a strange girl who only grows fatter,

so certain, mysterious,

Virgin self-fertile.

What grows in My womb?

At last I Am womban.

I tattoo My skin

with a shaman's patterns,

and I take no man.

I make My own wild way.

Once I was tender,

once juicy and yielding.

Could I have been taken

like the others, and eaten, 

become cup or two dippers,

scooped out, disemboweled,

a sacrifice?

Now it's too late.

I Am hard in My laughter.

Whole and free,

I dance and I rattle.

Alone, full of emptiness,

I bring joy to the circle.

Pregnant with rhythm,

I dance a life sacred

beyond all uses.

The light and the shadow

play harmony on My curves.

I Am Riku'ama, First Mother.

Humans cling to My cauldron

like dry fragile vines.

Mystery is My belly

rocking big with laughter.

© Tamara Rasmussen 2018