Poem for Beltane Night

 

This Beltane is marked by storms, especially

of the inner kind: loss, bereavement, trauma, 

challenge, one after another. In the quiet of night

I go out, to find a large moon high behind trees –

and next to her Jupiter, clear, close as a lover.

This night I have no lover of my own 

to help me celebrate. Even those cats are gone

who used to come with me at midnight

into the circle of my patch of earth, my garden 

and my sacred trees, to greet the moon.

Yet I feel the whole earth pulsing with love

in this time of alive silence: a throb beyond

our ears to hear, yet not beyond our feeling.

The street, empty of people, is full 

of presences co-existing, just out of sight.

They come in peace. I greet them so.

Somewhere else, there is fighting,

there is fear, there is death, there is horror.

Tomorrow, I may have to face them,

those conditions, but tonight –

I’ll gaze at my own face in the mirror, 

speak to myself the words of blessing, 

bringing in love for me, love for my friends, 

love for the Goddess and the God, 

love for all creation, love of Life. 

Beautiful world, I will not forget you,

even when the work gets hard and the nights 

grow cold. The love I summon is for you, 

your regeneration; the love I call into being 

is for all of us. The love I am is that which I seek. 

I stand in love. My heart embraces the Universe 

as my hand blows a kiss to the moon.

Inside, I pour a nip of ginger wine.

I write a poem for Beltane. (Poetry as fertility.)

Pieces of dark chocolate melt in my mouth.

Why Did Life and Circumstance ...?

On my smart TV I find Jules et Jim

and watch it again after all this time,

remembering when Verona and I

saw all the New Wave movies from France. 

There had never been anything like them. 

We were both in love with Alain Delon. 

Though The Seventh Seal from Sweden was 

what utterly blew our minds. (Nothing else

did; we were probably the last generation

so innocent of drugs.) We were living in Carlton, 

I was a student. There was only one university

in Melbourne then. The cinema was next to 

the pawn shop; we were customers of both. 

We became best friends: discovering and loving 

words and art together. We were sharing 

a rented house. She painted a mural 

on her bedroom wall – one that could be

washed off when we left. I failed French and 

switched to Philosophy. (English Lit was always 

a given.) Germaine Greer was on stage at the Union 

Theatre. We called it the Onion. Germaine could 

sing, dance, act and be funny, the lot. It was before 

she wrote her book. She had purple hair, long 

purple nails, legs that went on forever, and 

a voice husky from cigarettes. We all smoked. 

Everything altered with the long vacation 

when I went home to Tassie and we couldn’t 

keep renting the house. But it took a few more years 

and many life changes before that idyllic friendship 

soured. We were grown by then, mothers by then. 

I was already divorced the first time. Verona was 

widowed. I never saw her again after 1967, although 

I know vaguely what became of her (the grapevine). 

Like me, she contrived a life which she’s still living.

We only watched those movies once; they burned 

into the brain forever after. But now I’d like to go back, 

revisit the young Delon, wish once more for a mouth 

like Jeanne Moreau’s, and still be so blazingly clear

that Art is the whole meaning and purpose of life.

For Friday Writings #99: Why??? at Poets and Storytellers United, I'm asking people to entitle a piece 'Why—?' fill in the blank, and write to our title. As you see, my own title question is still somewhat unfinished, but I trust the poem will clarify.

Parting Company

How quietly we come to the end — do we? —

of a karmic connection through many lives.

This time, we loved each other: with the body briefly, 

with mind and heart and soul in the years since.

But now he wants to build monuments, fight battles …

would do me honour as long as I supported.

He carries the blood of Cherokee warriors 

and Slavic shamans. He resonates with Norse deities 

and Viking axes. I follow a different path. 

 

The heritage, genetic or magical (mine Celtic / Hindu,

while I’m drawn to Egyptian and Graeco-Roman gods) 

probably doesn’t matter. It’s where we choose to go

this time around which shapes us; what we choose to do.

Even when we performed the Rite, he was after power;

I did it for lust. But I loved him too, not for the wild man, 

the joker, the adventurer, but for a core of tenderness

I saw within, and for his truth-telling. I don’t know why

he came to love me too, but he did. Perhaps for the same.

‘That’s your teacher,’ his angels told him, the moment 

when he first saw me. ‘Don’t let him get the upper hand,’ 

mine said two weeks earlier, predicting our meeting 

when we were still strangers, unaware of each other.

I didn’t forget the advice. Perhaps he did. Now

he thinks I have nothing more to teach him. He wants 

to instruct me. ‘You’ll be looking for me,’ he says, ‘When

they come at you in that final battle.’ ‘Dear one,’ I reply,

‘do you not know, Love is the greatest weapon?’

We are texting from different continents. ‘My circle,’ 

he says, ‘collapses if you walk away.’ I tell him I cannot stay,

will not, to be seen as a party to violence, and add:

‘Like a cat, I usually go my own way.’ He says: ‘Goodbye.’

Sharing this one, on 29 November 2024, with Friday Writings #155 at Poets and Storytellers United. 

Crone Conversations

We elder daughters of Divine Mother,

meet in circle today for earth healing

and to explore the concept of ether

(spirit). This soon leads us to revealing

stories – which others may be concealing –

of life existing beyond the physical:

our own journeys into the mystical,

and messages, even visitations,

from loved ones who have now left this little

span of a life, this sphere of sensation.

‘So why do we need this meat sack?’ one asks. 

‘I love bodies,’ I say, ‘even this one,

now ageing.’ ‘It’s not for serious tasks 

you came in,’ she decides, ‘but to have fun.’ 

‘Yes!’ I say, ‘and this earth, under this sun,

I am so in love with … this planet, now

so troubled.’ We sober, wondering how

its many afflictions may find surcease.

Before leaving, we renew the deep vow

to be, in our lives, messengers of peace.

Written for Friday Writings #98 at Poets and Storytellers United. We were invited to write about one or more of the four classic elements: earth, air, fire and water, or perhaps the fifth: spirit, aka ether. This poem deals with that last one. (The form is a dizain, doubled.)

Remembering Letitia

 

Understanding comes:

why I woke up the other day

with such a sore throat, as if

I had spent hours sobbing;

why I couldn’t get myself

to the memorial service

for a lovely lady I knew;

why I‘ve been in retreat 

and even escape since then,

attempting to silence thought …

and why I’ve been thinking, 

nevertheless, of she who left us

already five years ago (can it be?)

on the same day as this latest 

event which I didn’t attend. I did 

attend hers, and spoke of her there,

and wrote many poems, then 

and thereafter. ‘She is an angel now,’  

we say, of those who have gone. 

For her, that was always true.

October

 

Octogenarian now, yet I still carry within me

Child, teenager, and all those younger women

That make up the layers and the fusion of myself.

On this day in early October, it seems well-timed –

Being at a place where the year slows before

Ending, yet also where the season renews – to

Recall all that I have been, I have become, I am.

Written for Magaly's prompt, October, for Friday Writings #97 at Poets and Storytellers United.

On Not Attending the Funeral Today

The funeral – sorry, memorial service –

for one of my sister Goddesses

is happening now and I’m not there.

Truthfully, catching a virus was convenient. 

I’m about funeralled out. Not that I didn’t 

care for her. Not that I’m not sad. Just that 

suddenly this one feels too much. Too many.

And my circle dancing days, my old body

tells me, are done. I’ve lent my velvet cloak 

and my sacred silk scarf to another Goddess 

who had moved away, but happens to be back

here at just this time. I know she was 

closer than I was to our dead friend, so

that seems right. I always think of her wearing

her own cloak – bright pink – joyously. 

Perhaps, today, it’s  better she wears 

my magenta one in grief. The Universe is good

at synchronising these tiny, fateful details.

For the rest, guests were requested

to wear either appropriate black, or else

the vivid colours – deep blues and greens,

bright purples – which the late artist loved.

I don my customary black pants, and add 

a vivid blue top. No, I’m not attending 

this funeral today, yet all my thoughts are there.