Swimming Upstream
The angel only comes
when you need her.
She folds her wings over your eyes
to take away the pain.
You say that I was blind in a past life,
my fingers learned to see there.
They touch your edges like sculpture,
bring you beyond the dark spaces
to the river, swimming upstream
in holy water.
I dance to connect myself
with sun wheels
dream circles
human hands.
I take your brown feet back
to the desert —
a shaman
in a circle of feathers
below an adobe sun.
When the Goddess came
her moonlight
was almost blinding —
Phoenix feathers
and flowers on her face,
feet of adobe.
I bring you gifts of adobe
and touch you with
fingers that learned to see
in a darker time.
— Diane Frank
