A wild woman born

has many flagons of magic

(and still other dungeons

remain in cobweb clasps)

She can drop her spells as stepping stones to glamor

turning each lock behind

in the black labyrinth.

The sky is crying rain drips

through the lashes of the tree

and in an instant splish-splash

summer’s gone

and we feel It coming.

How much more do you want of me, Mistress Moon

blinking your chimera’s eye, stirring my cells

in time to the moody lull of your barbarous beat,

intent on my submission, more white

than shark’s teeth, colder than icebergs, and broody –  endlessly throbbing?

Push sagacious eyes beyond

the tattooed patterned coating –

disregard the holy flesh

and seek within,

without . . .

I am wearing my life

like the gecko dons its skin –

ready to split at a moment’s notice

and leave all behind in the past.

I crossed over in the night for the very first time –

just floated serene and lonely

on coffee-brown water that lapped at my raft, unfelt.

I was not so much frightened as stricken with awe –

full of no earthly sensation

but the rushing of time, propelling me on and on.

Then at some exact moment –  the slate horizon

cracked like a splintering egg-shell

and strange orange light bled through the fissures of dark.

It was not yet my time.

A return to earth

for tending and restoration

is simply another phase

on the journey of Self.

I refuse to vanish or set

when gravity tugs me to earth

in a blaze of gore or glory –

to wane to nothingness beyond

a slice of ashen promise –

And I will not slide quietly by

a masculine smothering of power –

for the damage will already be done.

Have you seen how moonlight blazes so hard

it slips beyond any brute shadow?

(Painting: Victor Florence Pollett)

This is the womb of the world

where two seas collide

at a hammock of land

and bony rocks arch

in the jet blood-black spray.  Three

mythical crone stones –

who see what sharp lips never

tell – still watch through

their ageless snake hair for the

goings of they that

once crawled from their legs in the

primeval salt-dawn of time.

Likewise a novel

Grown from the roots of history

Is nurtured to life.