my head filled with visions of infants,
my palms open to your silver nails,
my eyes open to your rays of illumination,
my vagina & my womb gaping
to be filled by your radiance. . .
O goddess, I would be a worthy vessel.
Impermanence- all is impermanence.
The cock rises to fall again;
the woman fills only to empty
in a convulsion that shakes the world;
the poet grows to become a voice
only to lose that voice when death takes her.
A stroke cancels her upon the page-
& yet I open her book & a chill wind blows from eternity.
Goddess, I come to you
wreathed in tears, in losses, in whistling winds.
I wrap the witch’s herbs around my neck
to ward off the impermanence that is our common fate.
The herbs dry & crumble,
as my face grows the map of my anxieties,
& my daughter leaps up like a vine
twining around the trellis of impermanence.
O goddess, teach me to praise loss,
death & the passing of all things- for from this flux
I know your blessings flow.