Easter Poem

Empyreal rays from within go out and up, out and down, lighting spheres with spirals…a moon beam lies in the shadows…milk to this strong cuppa, tongue to this hearty drinking tune.

Evolution, you have played well, our game of hide and seek. So long you’ve kept quiet in your shallow breath. We forgot you.

What must you have heard from your hiding place, above our clouds, suspended beneath creator? If I could make you my child, I’d bundle you up and gently rock you for ten thousand years. I know, with a mother’s nose, that my child will never forget the fear that came to visit, and then made its home in each cell of her, in each droplet of blood, my child, powerless witness to atrocity.

A mother knows and though she may weep in the silent hours, when even the winged warblers who sing the world awake and asleep stand perched in dreams, she hopes to dilute her baby’s pain with her own river of tears. She knows the cut has gone too deep, yet there is some comfort in blood letting.

Meanwhile we fill our nostrils with elixirs, invisible unctions made from unfulfilled promises. It was the barren uncle who invented these aromas. He was jealous of his sister, whose rough and crippled fingers could still soothe a warrior to sleep. Even when they both grew old and she no longer knew the turbulent wonder of birthing the young, all the children came to her for a song, a story, love baked in her unleavened bread and to see their own brilliance cast back to them in her gemstone eyes, her liquid silver bones.

Uncle could not name the emptiness he felt. Words had not yet come to describe the loneliness of one who cannot connect, cannot carry water while walking a spiral path, who cannot see the tenderness of death, the blundering folly of ambition, the holy power of running full force in darkness. His emptiness cried out for a name.

So he occupied himself with answers. These had not yet been born. He created them, by stopping up the flow of our underground spring. As pressure grew below, and could not make its way to the surface, uncle grew dizzy with his new power. He took the mourning songs and turned them into anthems of war. He taught young boys to beat their chests to its rhythm. He taught them to build shields from the liquid bones of the dead. The male children loved the games that uncle made, and as long as they could return to the women for food and tenderness they enjoyed uncle’s ‘training’ (This was an answer he invented) and took it in good fun.

But the pressure kept building underground. Trees, grasses and small beings could not drink and the birthing pains of mater, deep below the surface increased, her growing undulations had no release.

For years we had to adapt to the stoppage. Boys needed training. Questions needed answers. Sister saw only girls at the hearth fires…and then the girls stopped coming (They wanted to be like the boys), except to take her bread, that she swaddled in finest linens, and carry it away. Everyone forgot the underground stream, its undulations trapped deep within.

Bella is here.

From her whispers come the misty mourning songs, the touch of death’s tender embrace, sung in a newborn’s coos and cries. “I’ve carried you across the river, and brought you here again, my love.”

We are fish, all. Fish within fish, seven and a multitude…

It seems there was some confusion as evolution hid on the other side of billowy clouds and was forgotten. Upon our sleek scales we grew rulers, in our bellies grew fingers and thumbs. We cannot quench our thirst.

Remember when we ran in the dark? Remember when our questions stood confidently beside us (They did not need answers to hold them up)? Remember when the grasses and ancient trees drank from the sweet silver liquid of mother’s birthing pains unstopped up and stretching out toward empyreal rays?

The empress parts her lips and sings to the stones.

There are days in each long cycle, when a portal opens. One breath releases long and even, and we may drink. We may remember. Today is such a day. The empress casts our brilliance into blue robin’s egg, through her gemstone eyes, her silvery marrow, and as we swim in a dream of walking…

…we may see ourselves in a million tiny fleshy, salty mirrors. We may feel ourselves swaddled by the cloak of darkness and carried over the river to begin again.

“Welcome home, my loves,” the empress murmurs, for in truth she loves us all.

It is her nature.

Advertisement