Raven’s Cry

 

Fake coyote calls split

a moon cracked sky in two.

False ‘Indian’ hoots and drums

stunned sleeping birds –

Why do ‘whites’

insist upon using Indigenous ways,

to make a point?

Coyotes know.

 

Did they think that she was blind

or that her dreaming body,

a roiling belly

wouldn’t warn her?

Deception is a ruse

to twist and hide from truth

even when La Llarona’s river

becomes a mirror

shivering under

winter solstice flight.

 

At dawn a flaming

orange glow

bled and pooled,

a lake of fire,

shimmered

before piercing eyes –

(She sees better in low light)

A dark star

rose with thorns

exposing

bruised and broken fruit.

 

While Coyotes slept

Raven brought the Light.

 

The Turning: She Rises

 

It was full moon this morning and when I walked to the river Mars and Pluto were the moon’s companions… I startled an elk in the Bosque and listened to bird song…the sunrise was muted and yet the red eye of the sun blinded me as it erupted over the horizon…

 

I am looking forward to this Turning of the Wheel because it means the days are shortening, cooler temperatures will come, and the Harvest, such as it is, will soon be upon us.

 

I am already finding grasses and the few wildflowers seeding up and have collected hollyhock stalks that are drying in the closet. The single devil’s claw has turned brown and is splitting open. Sunflowers follow the path of the sun and the Sweet Scent of Datura delights me each morning when I bend my body towards her to inhale the flower that the Hawk moth finds irresistible just as I do!

 

Last night I dreamed of a strange cottony puff – ball of a cloud that was also a spiral that was rising into a deep blue sky… This is supposed to be monsoon season but little rain has fallen and the meadow is ashen. Because rain has become an obsession I wondered if the cloud was telling me that rain will not be coming in August because it was climbing into the sky. Earth grief over drought continues.

 

However, the Spiral is also a universal symbol for the Great Goddess and because She is ascending, the cloud she inhabits may hold water that may yet fall.

 

This is the time of year when the old pre-christian religions celebrate this Rising of the Great Goddess, who brings in the Harvest as well as the darker months. This dance of darkness and light is central to the yearly seasonal round. The Great Goddess presides over Life and Death uniting them as one. There is a sense of completion that is associated with this Turning that soothes me. The scorching sun is on the wane and just knowing that longer shadows and a deep blue sky will soon replace a bleached dome and fierce white heat brings me to the edge of peace within.

 

I give thanks for my life, the gift of my precious animals, the multitude of bird songs, plants that flower on feeding hungry hummingbird babies, people I love, one woman in particular…

 

But the Water Woman in me still aches for the rain that does not fall.

 

Will She Who Rises usher in precious water to quench the thirsty Ground?