Blog o’ Gnosis

Some years ago, my wise friend Cybele gave me a sacred challenge: to meditate on the Wild and the Domestic, and write a poem about each. Cybele has a well-deserved reputation for going right to the soul’s questions, and offering challenges which bring that material to light. Her challenge to me was no exception.

At that time in my life, I held the currents of wild and domestic in a very strong grip: I was mother of two young children, soon to have a third, and focused a lot of my energy on creating eddies and swirls from those universal forces that would best serve my little ones growing up. My magical life coexisted uneasily with what I felt I had to do for the sake of my young family. The domestic was always a struggle for me, though I did it very well.

Now that balance is shifting radically for me, as my children are growing up and my marriage is ending. Though there is a great deal of pain and heartache accompanying this shift, I also feel a deep sense of relief, as energies long held in check are able to move where they will. I don’t know what balance these two forces will next settle into, but I have found myself over the past couple days remembering both poems, and thinking about the effort it took at that time to bring each force into consciousness enough to write something about it. Here they both are. See if you can spot which is which. (Both have been published, both are copyright by me.)

Conception Song

That day I called to you, with wild
grass seed in my hair, I was
hoping you would follow
me into the thicket. There
we feasted on green acorns,
and feathers from the red
tufted woodpecker, and we ended
up tangled in a sweaty
mess outside that small
round door in the ground. You
left an offering, said I looked
eighteen again, and I
laughed at you, the way the bees
buzzed around your shoulders.
The door opened and your gift
was dragged inside by the crazy-haired
lady who lives there. I hear her
cackling in my sleep when
the crickets are silent, she is mixing
our hair together again in her deep
pot. Root stew, baby greens,
pond water: it will be our breakfast
one morning. We will feast
for days on that small mystery,
like a footpath strewn with flowers,
a print of blood on the ground, a door
which opens once and then disappears.

Starlight

The path is cool, sand sticks to the soles of my
feet, slightly damp between the toes. To each

side the dune grasses brush against my legs,
a sound whispered, heard only between the

crashing of waves off shore. I am caught
by the smell of drying kelp, and a wind which

blankets me, wanting me to lie down
with it. All I see is a thin line maybe just

ahead of me, maybe this path which traces
the dunes for as far as I know. A faint line

is enough, this late, and twenty stars
make a basket of light to walk by.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 26th, 2006 at 10:13 am and is filed under Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.