The natural order

If there was ever a natural order,

It is the part of you that knows

To press a wound to stanch the blood,

That knows to place cool cloth on the forehead

Of the incapacitated,

That knows.

 

Women have always been

The knowers of this knowledge,

Sacred protectors and keepers

Of their children.

Show me a mother, and I

Shall show you a medical expert;

In her bones is the wisdom

Of the deep.

 

Every rubber stamp,

Every stethoscope

Is an encroachment on this order.

Every man in his white coat,

Small but acting large behind his clipboard.

Who are we,

Intervening between knowledge and its effect?

Why do we believe a degree

Certifies us to know what we know?

 

If there is a return to ancestral wisdom,

It is in silence, stillness,

The moments that are universal.

In such moments, no certification is necessary.

If there is an ingress, it is pain,

The human knowing of my hurt,

The knowing of the hurt of all beings,

Our collective tissue.

In hurt are the edicts of the gods:

“Move here, press here, apply here.”

 

When I was a child,

I cut my thumb,

And it wasn’t so much the band-aid that healed it;

It wasn’t the antiseptic.

Nay, it was my mother,

Pressing that wound, kissing that hand,

Praying it better.

It was a kind of silence and stillness that surrounded the moment,

Through which I received God’s love.