My heels are as strong as my mother's heels
who walked the globe until her soles wore clean through,
until she'd laced the Taj Mahal into her shoe
and Greece was a link around her ankle.
My neck is as strong as hers
who woke in the wailing dark,
when a tornado had taken her street into its mouth
and was choking on the rope of her bedroom curtains.
Who loaded the bricks of the houses she loved,
while other women stood
and screamed at the sky.
My teeth are as strong as hers
who bore thirteen pounds of my brother
in the back of the old gray house,
in silence
like Wang Lung's wife.
My bones are as strong as my grandmother's bones
who could lay a side of beef on a block,
and hack with a cleaver until her arms were sticky red.
Who tied sausage in the morning and hung it to smoke.
Who stirred tongues in a black pot all afternoon.
My spine is as strong as hers
who kept the town clean in a washtub,
her brow dripping in with the soap and the clothes.
Who pulled load after load from the dryer,
when Georgia was a Fury
cursing August to burn.
Even the air was dangerous,
so that sheets burst into flames.
Who dropped a blaze of laundry
just before it scorched her hands.
My eyes are as strong as hers
who still saw herself when her teeth were not her own,
nor her hair
nor her breasts.
My blood is as strong as my great aunt's blood
who fell in love with a boxer,
and dreamed of seeing whatever was past Alabama
as soon as she could.
My lungs are as strong as hers
who then carried the fighter's shriveled body
when he'd met his final match,
coming toe to toe
with Parkinson's.
Who cleaned a hero's bedpan for a decade of every day,
because if she didn't, even once,
then who would?
Who put food in his newborn mouth
with a spoon.
And when I feel weakness creeping underneath my fingernails,
I envision her, after he is gone.
Knowing, and counting her nickles, smiling.
Knowing she is eighty and that now it is time.
There, she stretches her arms out,
closes her eyelids,
unknots pewter hair.
There, she stands in the coolest wind,
an old woman
on the Great Wall of China.
