Purification

                            With thanks to Joy Harjo

By Naomi Ayala

I forgive you.

I forgive you body

for picking the apple –

if it was an apple you picked.

If there was an apple at all.

If love and an awakening

of the senses were at stake

and you took your chance to be intelligent.

I forgive you for how

when they accused you of being a danger

to my eternal salvation

you recoiled

and damned your self

like the pestilence of sin

not knowing any better yet.

I release you of all sin.

I release you from the power

of the Church Grandfathers

that worked itself in you

like the “witchcraft” they tried to eradicate

and thinking you’d be embraced with prayer

you opened, innocent, expectant.

I release you from all the hymns

sung and heard through your aching back

against the hardening pews

of your Sunday mornings

when songbirds were put off

and you wanted to ask so many questions.

I forgive your kneeling down

to search yourself

for the impurity of crimes – beginning

with masturbation and ending with sex –

and how, when you came up short

you knelt, knelt again

searching for shame, brewing it

like a back-home tea for the first time

out of your own songs of innocence.

I forgive you the cramps in the belly.

The ulcers.

I forgive you your moon

your woman’s impurity

you tried to wash off like rape

with the same hands you used

to imitate the flight of birds, to speak a poem.

I release you of all hunger

you took to be your prisons

and give you your humanness laid bare.

You clay bit of earth –

bearer of nations.

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