If You Want to Know Me

If you want to know me, you have to want to know what is in my blood
Where the lines extend from, where my blood trails from
You have to know where I come from and what ancestry flows in my body
and through my eyes

If you want to love me, you must know what I most detest
The hunger, dying, poverty of children
The rape and denial of women
The savage punishment of feeling men

If you need me, you need to know I am needed elsewhere, too
to beg for the collapsed,
to defile the know-how,
to find arms that are ready to give
and provide relief

You must also understand that I do not understand myself
yet
That I was born a non-negotiable complexity,
an unfolding idea,
a slow-motion birth to completeness

I am pushed forward by something Divine,
a circulating Wind that moves the clouds
a Voice that stills the trees
and a Breath that moves the grain