Poetry
Two of your books are collections of your poetry. Have you a poem which we could share here?
Yes, there are two more collections of poetry in planning. And yes, I would like to share one but, instead, will share two, one from each.
The first, Nerthus, is from Goddess Songs:
Nerthus
Roll on voluptuous goddess
great mother, great provider
awful taker of all that is
so that more yet again may be given
Your breasts are the rolling hills
Your navel is the well at the center of the world
Your eyes are the sparkling seas
Your flesh is the earth we tread this night
Take us and burn us and grind us to Your will
plow us back into the fields
strengthen Your self with our feeble offerings
and bring forth new life
Your vagina is the end of the furrow
Your belly is the fertile fields which feed us
Your breath is the wind of life and death
Your soul is the moon which teaches us
Roll on voluptuous goddess
rivers and plains and mountains
forests and lakes and seas
as we, Your children, tread you lightly and give back for taking
Next, and in a far different tone is a poem from Dry, Stone, Walls:
41 Years in New England (1647-1688)
Alice Young and Elizabeth Kendal and Margaret Jones
Hung as witches
Denial on their lips as they stood on the scaffold
but conviction in the rope as it caressed their throats harshly
slowly squeezing off life
from their thrashing bodies
as good God-fearing men looked on
probably wondering if they thrashed about half as much
under their Dark Lover.
Joan and John Carrington of Wethersfield
joined in love, joined in wedlock, joined on the hangman's tree
dancing together for the last time
when any other dancing was immoral therefore illegal
at least they met their fate together
spared from the lonliness of facing death alone
like so many others in that rock strewn landscape
Rebecca Greensmith confessed but Nathaniel didn't
but it didn't make any difference at all
as they hung like rotten fruit
from Hartford Gallows
jerking, then just swaying
till they were plucked to be buried
without honor, without friends, without even a stone
to mark their passing
Mary Johnson and Goody Bassett and crazy old Goodie Glover
they all confessed
and died because of it
in Wethersfield and Fairfield and Boston
but Alice Lake and Lydia Gilbert and Ann Hibbens
they all denied it
and still they died
in Dorchester and Windsor and Boston
victims of fear and cruelty and righteous religious slander
And Goody Knapp of Fairfield and Mary Sanford of Hartford
victims of imported fear and manipulated hatred
and lust and fears of lust and lust unstillable
threateners of the status quo
and Mary Barnes of Farmington
who signed a pact with the devil
just like all the others
though no one ever brought forth proof
to justify sixteen bodies
hanging in scenic New England
And then came Salem