The Blood that Renews the World

(a letter from the grandmothers)

[art by Dee Mulrooney and my inspiration for my next book]

When you felt all your lives within you, you still knew how to imagine and create worlds with other beings.

Come with us down to the water’s edge at twilight. The sun stipples the clouds with pink and gray, calling to the salmon in the streams. The tree frogs fill their bodies with golden air and sing to each other through the trees. The purple iris holds her petals close. The beaver awakens, drawing circles that ripple across the body of the pond. A bat begins to dance in the gloaming. All of these beings—frog and iris, bat and beaver—expresses itself in a way that is both uniquely its own and yet shared among all of its kind. The trees sigh, exhaling breaths of invisible mist they have collected throughout the day. Deep in the dirt the mushrooms are preparing to burst through the earth in circles upon the ground.

Where are you in these circles, little one? What are you singing? How are you dancing? What shapes are you drawing across the body of the earth?