Reflect on this: Even though men also have bodies, women have often been considered to be more intimately connected to their bodies than men have. React to that statement and to the poetry we read (Lucille Clifton`s "Poem to my Uterus," and "To My Last Period"; Anne Sexton`s "In Celebration of My Uterus"; and Luci Tapahonso`s "Blue Horses Rush In") and to the Anais Nin short story, "Birth." A minimum of three paragraphs.

Before the birth, she moved and pushed inside her mother.

Her heart pounded quickly and we recognized the sound of horses running:

the thundering of hooves on the desert floor.

Her mother clenched her fists and gasped. She moans ageless pain and pushes: This is it!

Chamisa slips out, glistening wet and takes her first breath.

The wind outside swirls small leaves and branches in the dark. Her father`s eyes are wet with gratitude. He prays and watches both mother and baby—stunned. This baby arrived amid a herd of horses,

horses of different colors.

White horses ride in on the breath of the wind. White horses from the west

where plants of golden chamisa shimmer in the moonlight.

She arrived amid a herd of horses. Yellow horses enter from the east

bringing the scent of prairie grasses from the small hills outside. She arrived amid a herd of horses.

Blue horses rush in, snorting from the desert in the south. It is possible to see across the entire valley to Niist`aa from To.1 Bah, from here your grandmothers went to war long ago.

She arrived amid a herd of horses.

Black horses came from the north.

They are the lush summers of Montana and still white winters of Idaho

Chamisa, Chamisa Bah. It is all this that you are.

You will grow: laughing, crying,

and we will celebrate each change you live.

You will grow strong like the horses of your past. You will grow strong like the horses of your birth.