So many people have asked to see the poems from the show last night (there was so much to see and hear - paintings and animation projected on the walls, music, my poems, not to mention the wonderful 'air-work' of the women in Mara's class (Julie, Holland, Nancy, and Kristen - they were marvelous and graceful and magical); it was a feast for the senses!) that I'm posting the poems here, in the order of how they appeared in the show. The first two were performances on the ladder, the third was using harnesses, the last was using a trapeze:
REVOLUTION
I think of them twice a day—
before sleep and upon waking—
the women who turn the wheel
of the year. I picture the Goddess
at the center with her hair flying
as her head rises and falls, the totems
of dove, serpent, and sow spinning
around her. If the Goddess is Arianrhod,
the wheel is a silver star, a ship
dipped into the sea, where heroes ride
to the Moon’s land of death. In dreams
I travel with them, stand near this guide
whose eyes and touch are cool
and blue. As Kali, she is both mother
and grave, dancing a dance of time
with feet like a wheel of fire,
wearing a necklace of skulls, killing
what needs to be killed. From her
comes the gift of aging, wisdom written
onto my skin for all to read. As Fortuna,
she is fastened tight, raising the fallen
and abasing the proud, her consort
waiting at the point of midnight,
holding the poppy stalk of death.
Through her odd days are female
and sacred. As the Virgin, she is higher
than all creatures visible or invisible;
she bestows every grace of body
and every beauty of soul. At birth
she sprinkled my face with life-giving
water. These four are corners, directions,
circles. I remember to pause often,
and follow the force of their revolutions—
how the mythic wheel steadily pulls,
and also when it stops turning on the still,
dark day of winter solstice and the summer
day on the other side of the year, a gentler
sort of death. In between she is always
with me, in the wheel of the sun, the earth,
as they spin in the airless universe,
and closer, when I lie alone in the dark
of late night and early morning,
my body silently turning in the wheel
of the eye, the heart, the breath, the hand.
______________________________________
WATERING PLACE
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
-Robert Frost, “Directive”
I imagine you on a path, returning to water,
returning to what you once left by design –
not just to burn off the irrelevant details
of self by lesson or law, but to find
the mind before the mind was given –
as question. There’s no story about where
you’re going, no voice, no images
in dreams of face or tree or star as guide,
though you are watched with eager eyes
as you come near, as you are lost, let go,
in the center of the pausing that opens
to receive each day’s little draught
of life, with its darkness light not yet seen.
This isn’t just your road, it belongs
to all the wanderers and worshippers
who journey and don’t ask how it will end.
They know the only passage between earth
and sky is the next step. The only boundary
is the hand of the person in front and behind.
They know - like you – the heart is never dry –
inside water waits, wants to be found.
______________________________________
AWAKENING
When light has again lifted us
from darkness, from waiting, and time
is less memory and more dream,
we rush to gather stones, turning
them like beads on a rosary,
like planets orbiting one another
in our hands. We forget the stillness
of the self, the peaceful pause between
birth and breast, sealed carefully inside
to keep us free. Instead, we throw wishes
into wells, fountains—each a fault
of the heart—another stone—heavier
than the feather on one side
of the ancient scales of the dead.
Somewhere, at the bottom of the world,
is a mound of stones, growing
until the soul, weighted beyond limit,
falls through. Then, how love expands
in the echo of the eye. And the body,
once a pendulum, swinging, becomes
a bridge, rising in the space between.
___________________________________
RETURNING
At the top of the trees that touch the sky
live the women who light the stars
at morning and evening. Visit them
when you feel wild and lonely—
follow their silhouettes in the dark
and the ice, as they turn the day
into a pink bloom. When the sky
is an immaculate blue, lie in the billowing
fields, the earth a carousel beneath you,
spinning slowly. Stay when the sky
is plum purple, until night is steep
and gleaming. Then you will learn
when is enough. How to quiet the fear
and the starving. How to be the bearer
of rain. How the body is still part
of the garden. As the women ascend
and descend, each with their little fire,
your heart will become a flock of birds,
rising to fill the sky with wings.
Soon you will remember how to say yes.
