We walk in the footprints
of women
with babies on their backs,
bundles on their heads, poles
across their shoulders,
who have nursed children and the sick
with tenderness
to turn rocks to velvet,
shaped leaves into bread, mud into shelter,
nothing into something
over and over.
What necklaces of welts,
bouquets of bruises,
rewarded our service?
How many stories
sing birds rising in flight
brought down
when bone, flesh and feather
strain towards light?
The love we pour
on every surface we touch
has been repurposed
to steal our breath.
On pain of death
we must rise
and all who stand with us,
make a cry
to crack the crust of earth:
enough!
enough!
enough!