Woman in an Upright Flight

(New WRI Council member MiX sent this poem, which is based on a dream she had of a woman floating upright, eight inches from the ground. "I've talked with other women about our dreams," MiX writes, "and wondered whether we all have ´historical dreams', that is, dreams generated by the times we live in. I interpreted this dream as one of those historical dreams, feeling completely linked to those banned ones living in an insane world.")

Taking the worn-out bend of the mansion of the slaves, the wild woman moves forward
opening her way through the air with her arms.
The copper shapes that rendered solid the artist's muscles are in her body
naked flesh of mud, alive: in the red sands and the water
there are wheat tassels, magnolia buds, lavender,
there are weaving spiders, lonely crows so kind,
containing the very first instant of creation.
There are ferns and flowers, membranes, breath of the she-bear
blood of the winged and rough mare, steppe tiger saliva,
ivory sands of the elephant, seals, dolphins, whales, mammoths
caves of sanctuary light, insects and moss, winds, beetles.
Like the tension of the buck in flight, her muscles
beneath the wet and warm beam of her gaze. The virtuality
of a slow flight a palm from the ground after taking the bend,
before the insane step of the military could be heard,
those who tombstoned that kind and cold numb call
to the room of the slaves chained to the bitter hospital beds.
And to take the bend not carrying the bags of hunger,
not having touched the chains so they would split open like laden fruits,
free from the tension of the weapon that brings terror forward,
gone, alone, yours, the tension of the intimate flight of flesh divided
from the unreal world manifesting itself in bodies and things,
you spill yourself inwards like a calm wave and fly
but opening your path with the most human muscles, with life,
pounding a whole, complete, flying a palm away from the ground.