Tag: poems

Poem: a wild hymn

a wild hymn 

 

Their footprints gather around the stone. 

 

The ancient birthburial ground. 

The place hidden among the lindens.  

 

It’s as if I can see them here, women in the woodland;

knelt in prayer, anointed, weaving, drumming

through the centuries. 

 

Maybe                I’ve been here before. 

Maybe                this is from some other time, 

                            some other body. 

Maybe                here I made my plea 

                            to the woman in the linden tree

               

           And she answered. 

 

She sent out silken soldiers, retrieved my wishes,

 and has returned for me

lifetimes later, to my new body and says

“Come.”

 

Dark                     Light

Mother                 Lover

                Queen 

 

I’m back in time, surrounded 

by ancient women and from their goddess’s forest

uprose a wild hymn.

It thrills through me, opens up my bones like husks

and I’m with her. 

 

Branches grow from my shoulders, adorned

with emerald leaves, bright berries.

My skin is bark. 

My face, smoothed wood. 

 

Ancestors. Only as strong as their memories known. 

I stand in their long-eroded footprints around the stone. 

Summer is a bandage and I welcome her ruthless healing

 

The last two seasons have had me swept up in their rainy days. When it snowed, so did I. When the sky poured water on to the Earth, I let mine flow too. None of us are strangers to sadness and I didn’t expect summer to taste as sweet as it does, didn’t expect the rising temperatures to make me shed some skin, but there’s always something sinister about sugar.

2018 was the best year of my life and so far 2019 is shaping up to be one of the worst. I’m mining my heart and mind for anything that sparkles enough to tell me why; what do those years, 2019, 2017, and 2014; what did they each share? What blades did they bring to the fight? What was it about those years that tore my attention away from the sublime colors of the sunset and the miracle of creative survival back into the depths of a lesson I just can’t seem to learn?

If I’m being honest, I think I know the answer. But I don’t want to be honest right now. I want summer.

I don’t let that shadowy space deep in my belly even suggest the formation of a sentence or a plea in my mind. Summer is a bandage and I can feel something, somewhere, lost in my gut or my soul or maybe lost in my heart (it’s so hard to tell apart things in my closet that I’ve been ignoring) so instead I shrug and buy another candy apple; ride the Ferris Wheel, and plunge my legs into the ocean.