Prayer for a Batek becoming

for Baliwon

On this distant island, you arrive
Bringing ancestral prayers of protection
You call out for singing birds dipped in ink
To perch themselves on paper
Aligning yourself to perfect sacred line and shape
The spirits sing and come through your hand

You channel this for the bearer-you hardly know,
but you know now in this moment
Sensing her destiny
These lines will carry her and her descendants forward in time

Marks initially meant for Igorot warriors
Who take enemy heads
Become new ritual marks for the wandering native woman
Displaced and planted
Without language to speak to ancestors
Without harvest knowledge of red rice and tapuy
Without ogayam to appease Kabunian of her mountain home

Voice slightly vulnerable and trembling, you reveal a
Sketch of a batek becoming
Lines held by wise women before her
The lived, deeper meaning she knows:

This mark here, for the time she paddled
Between islands into the sun
Across high Pacific ocean swells
This mark here, for the time she road swells
Diving deep into the tremors of her dark womb
Birthing Malaya-her sweet freedom-into light
These marks here, for the circle of holy women she calls on and calls baylan
And this, this is for the sacred assignment yet to be accepted

For the healer, leader and compassionate lover of all people she ascends to be
you channel this mirror of yourself, because
you know
you see
you recognize

Mountains that arch towards the heavens
Rivers that bend and flow into oceans
Pestle and mortar that pound the sustenance of rice
Snake that stretches its spine in prayer
Sheds its skin for something greater to emerge

You honor that these all must one day ready themselves
To meet, join as one sacred source and be
Brought home, safely home.

*batek-tattoo or kakau
*Kabunian- significant diety of several northern Luzon ethnic groups
*tapuy- rice wine
*ogayam-chant