Imbolc poem

Under the snow

the frozen earth awakens.

She has her own knowing:

a secret calendar whispered to soil, roots, robins.

In my cave I strike a match against the wall to light a candle. 

The long shadows creep back,

Each breath exhaled makes the flame dance.

It is not time to send the quiet away,

my reflection in the pond is still clouded with ice.

The wind sighs: “not yet.”

Is it true that we decide when to be born, our souls cast in flesh, inspired by a

constellation rising on the eastern horizon?

Our incarnation is an act of God, or magic.

When you seek to know the divine, they will appear everywhere you look.

Go and gather the seeds of the past

in anticipation of what will unfurl. 

Maiden

O Persephone,

patriarchy’s darling:

how many will rewrite your story 

and never pass you the quill?

I want to know what you would choose if you could create your own destiny.

Do you regard your descent with curiosity or despair: a welcome escape or an abduction from the familiar?

Did you look back from Hades’ chariot on the sunny life that was never meant to be yours?

Who will take up the cause of your freedom?

As for that forbidden fruit of the underworld—

I have carried this satchel of fated seeds,

pouring them out like marbles 

or pick up sticks when I begin to notice my own complacency anew.

I believe stories and myths are like distant ancestors:

I studied their lines so well, I could perform in my sleep.

For too long I have been unconscious.

(I don’t want to play this role anymore.)

One garnet seed keeps me bound: compelled to repeat or evolve. 

I could leave them both, learn to make fire, and become a woman who only belongs to herself.

You, Persephone, live inside my bones.

We are the fates: spinning our own blindfolds.

Teach me how to see in the dark, in spite of myself. 

Equinox poem

Scilla Siberica is coming up on the hill

and I think of how the patriarchy 

transforms every innocent into a monster or a muse.

Our mother opens her arms as we return

to the upper world of spun-gold light, and 

today the light and the dark will have equal turns in the sky.

Today I am alive but

for days and days I’ve been finding 

nothing but bones,

little reminders that my role on earth could

be revoked at any inconvenient time.

Calcified treasures:

a deer’s femoral head,

broken vertebrae,

and the skull of a goose, maybe.

Walking back down the hill to the house

I stop, caught on the wild rose,

(emaciated and snatching at any passing flesh),

and ask you to “hold my bones.”

In your cupped hands

they are a pile and I think maybe I should 

have left them for the birds.

After all, they seem to be the ones running

the show: flying south and flying north

in an attempt to order these endless weeks and days.