Croning in Bali

Already it has happened?
He saw it before I knew.
Grandmother, he called me.

Quick I turned
to see if I could see her.
Grandmother?
She laughed in my ear and spit in the sand
to leave her sign of DNA.

The Balinese boy acknowledged
Grandmother coming through.
Hello hello, here you are.
Are you really me?
Grandmother, he called me today,

an honoring appellation,
at the casual end of an answer
to a question I had put to him.
Is she here? Are you here,
Grandmother?

The young Balinese
bowed when he said it.
But who is this one he bows to?
How do I do
the respect he has given?

I walked in a sarong today
but didn’t know I had stepped
into Grandmother slippers
woven with lightning and tigers.
Today my Grandmother life begins.

He saw it before I knew,
he called me forth, and now
my longed-for Croning has happened.
Here I come, as Grandmother,
striding across the threshold.

©Susa Silvermarie 2024