I swim in darkness or shadows
for protection and you
are here with Creator
knitting my bones together
in your willing vessel.
Each day your body
yields to mine, your beating heart,
like a drum taut with hide
beats above me or around me,
its comfort lulls me to sleep or
sets my feet to dancing.
I twist and spin in the depths
never needing air
never needing land
or possessions except this
life undeniably mine
slip- knotted to yours
and immersed with our ancestors
who first began to swim the depths.
Kimberlee Medicine Horn Jackson, Yankton Dakota, has earned an MFA and MA. Recently, her work has been with the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Friends of the CVNP as well as being curator for the NEA Big Read Project for Joy Harjo’s American Sunrise with the Wick Poetry Center. Other published work has appeared in Ethnosphere Literary Magazine, the South Dakota Quarterly, and the Yellow Medicine Review Literary Magazine. Jackson volunteers as a judge for the Geauga Park District Nature Writing Contest each year for the adolescent category. She is a member of the Ohio Poetry Association.
