My one wish
is to embody your grace
at life’s end,
after I have put to rest
Persephone’s childish innocence,
whimsical as a wildflower,
and her tragic fall,
led astray by the dark one to the place of no return,
emerging from girlhood sharp and savvy
or crazed and scattered
or a woman whole and centered,
but wounded—
having lost something in the depths—
a purity, a sacred unity,
Aphrodite’s addictive passions,
her perpetual falling in love with men,
her thirst for touch, her lust for skin,
her hunger for adoration, her dovelike vanity,
a single-minded devotion to art,
a wild creativity, manic energy,
growing and loving and building in a frenzy,
a rose blooming to perfection,
but then setting herself ablaze
in a sudden and violent desire for destruction,
murdering romance in a fierce and dramatic immolation,
Demeter’s bottomless well of self-sacrifice,
her daily devotion to the child,
a practical, unglamorous love,
as ordinary as bread, as natural as grain,
her sleepless nights, incessant washing and cooking,
a tireless labor, a steady presence,
her life an endless circle,
absorbing the child’s pain and deflecting his dramas,
a love emanating from the soil,
from some deep instinctual place,
Hera’s uncompromising loyalty,
her desire to couple, her allegiance to one man,
her jealousies and pettiness,
affections and tenderness,
easily wounded, sour and sensitive,
yet holding fast to a commitment which has converted her,
has disintegrated her incipient dreams,
and birthed a new, copper pride:
wife and partner,
joining her life with his,
shouldering his hopes and sharing his burdens,
transforming her singleness and fragility,
into a stalwart whole,
a merging of two lives into one,
Artemis’ skillful aim,
a diligent focus
on achieving her goal,
a devotion to excellence,
to stalking her prey,
the thrill of the hunt,
a zeal for the glorious kill,
her strength and single-minded purpose,
protectress of the weak and vulnerable,
her sharpness and self-righteousness,
her fulfillment and mastery,
All these Gods—
I have inhabited their robes,
peered through their masks,
answered to their names,
but at the end of life, I must disrobe,
unfasten their belts,
slip off their jewels,
release their burdens,
their goals diluting like mist over sun-pierced waters.
And return to you, my peace-loving aunt,
my beloved nun, my wise companion,
you are not concerned with beauty or achievement,
appearances or politics,
attachment to ideas
You slowly release your intensity
your anger and your affections,
for any one person—your child, husband, sister,
lover, enemy, your mother.
Your embrace widens
to encompass them all,
for creatures you have known and not known,
for the dead whose bodies are slowly melding with the earth,
for owls and earthworms,
for new pink buds that emerge on branches as babes in mothers’ wombs.
You arise in the morning
to tend the hearth,
with passionless hands
you stir the embers,
with a creased brow, greying temples,
sip your tea by the fire,
as you admire the sun’s modest awakening
mirrored in peach and violet-streaked clouds,
to ponder and read,
to whisper your daily prayers,
to sift through memories,
contemplating the stirring of trees in the wind,
solitary but not lonely,
in harmony with the living and the dying,
realizing you are a thread woven in earth’s fabric,
a wave cresting and returning to the sea,
a single note in life’s endless melody.
