The sun has drowned in twilight,
Azure and violet streaks gutting the horizon
With bruises.
The night descends with a velvet hush,
Moonclad darkscape emerges, spreads arching
Silent wings.
She emerges, stretches,
Yawns away the wide black world of sleep with rich red lips.
Trapped through the warm drowsy months,
She now unfurls,
A vine of ivy opening, reaching.
She holds the vibrant keys to ghost world
Between ripe cream breasts, shining
In the misted moonlight,
They glimmer together, sharing secrets,
Beneath the veil of unearthly fog.
She moves on, leaves trailing behind her, shadows
Dancing up against bark and bracken,
Wild cavorting spectres.
Her dusty dark-lashed eyes follow faithfully
The thunderous beat of her heart: the jungle-dance
Of rhythmic pounding,
Leading her along the silvered river
Awake with starlight.
The trees whisper her many names, welcoming,
Beckoning in hushed breaths,
Brushing their tendrils of damp green against her thighs
As she passes, scent of oak and moss lingering, palpable.
Her bare feet tread deeply the rich soil, the clods
Of moist, fertile earth pushing up between her toes
Like mountains.
She is rooted like an elm, every foot step
Reconnects her to the mossy ground, every
Sigh pulls in the cold spectral air and disperses it,
Every strand of hair glimmers like spun crystal
In the un-light of the forest.
Elusive nightjars sigh in approval;
She has come again.
She hears the celestial night-call of the stars above,
Those burnished silver specks, mother’s love
Smiling down, a heavenly chorus of
Sharp edged frost-bite alive with jewels.
Her eyes reflect the sky, the wash of purple
Flesh stretched like fabric,
Under the waning moon.
Predator.
Agile limbs curve like smiling bone, white,
Silky, a heady scent of musk and winter storms
As she prowls through murky underbrush,
Lips alive with fire.
Legend breathes on the wind swiftly,
And in rough tussocked hillsides beneath standing stones
Circles clad in white perform a dutiful dance of celebration,
Hands reaching towards equinox,
Autumnal frost
Creeping up their skirts.
They cut the air with their blades, reaping up the world
That has been sown, the bountiful, the plenty,
The fruit of the goddess, brought to them
Now that she walks once more. Oh, they are thankful,
Bursting like seeds.
No longer mere women, these worshippers,
But goddesses themselves, transformed, uplifted,
United in the mother’s protective womb, strung together
By her arrows.
Their hair flies free
In the shivering wind,
Naked shoulders burned by the moon.
She smiles a feral smile and vanishes
Into the secret spaces of trees and noise.
Author notes
Notes:
'mother's love' refers to the fact that in some legends, the dark maiden/diana/hecate was born of the Titan Perses and the star goddess Asterias. In her turn, Diana is not only the huntress, but a goddess of the night skies.
'ghost world' is what medieval people referred to sometimes as the underworld. Diana and Persephone are often used interchangably, and I liked the idea of her rising in the autumn and coming for the reap and the bearing of fruit and the collecting of the plenty as Persephone did.
I tried to give a sense of her being part of the land itself, a wild goddess connected to every root, every tree, every dew drop on the petal of a flower.
The ceremony was performed by women at the equinox to usher in the time of the fruitful goddess and praise her for the granting of harvest bounty.
Do let me know if I should shorten it. I am aware it is long and parts may be cut out XD
A contest entry
- The Goddess Within by Scar Symphony.
700 points, ended August 16, 7 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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This is stupendous! It is so vivid with imagery and sensory detail. You can feel the loam between her toes, smell the leaves and the tree bark, feel the coolness of the night. Your whole poem is rich with Presence. I found this vibrant, powerful, and moving. I can't wait to read more of your work, if it is like this. Thank you for sharing this piece.
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holy hell, that was one massive mamma jamma! And every last part of it was superb. Nice flow, nice story, nice poem over-all. Nicely done!
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Mama Jama? lol Nice. Thanks for having the patience to read it XD
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Amazing, there is nothing!...not one thing i would change about this...this is the exact thing im looking for, you are wonderful and a very very talented writer....praises for an excellent job...thank you for this entry...
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Thank you
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Nice job on this one. It will be appreciated by Wiccans and druidical types for its spirituality and by others for its rich imagery. I enjoyed it alot. Very well done.
Mike
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