a poem by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
BIRTH DAY
Carry me back through the laboring dark
into first light first cry first touch
of Mother’s hands Those hands
broad-palmed big-fingered always working
kitchen hands comfort hands hands that tried
to stitch the world back together
when Father erupted the furies took over
It was the summer of ’43 What did my young parents know
about the Europe they’d fled
the trains the chimneys What happened
to Father’s mother his father his sister Maia named
for that goddess who dances with veils Some say
She’s illusion Some say She’s creation
plays with imagination then rips
the magic carpet away
Carry me back to that cave I clambered into
decades ago hushed by the resonant dark
where ancient hands shaped Her stony vagina just so
at noon on the vernal equinox a ray of sun
would penetrate Her innermost space Look
through the rocky lips of Her vulva the earth
bears fruit Your little life and mine in the flow
of all the mothers of mothers the grandmothers of magic
the daughters of ritual skill who carry us living and dead
Come Sit with me by the fire though bones ache
memory flickers hands lose their hold
on the world Those evil spirits who spooked
my cradle are back The fire spits
and sputters The furies rave
and mutter Here comes Maia
dancing in the flames She who lit
the fire of every life I’ve lived
has no patience with lamentation She shows me
Her teeth and I know it is She
who will carry me out through the laboring dark
when it’s time She
who will rip
the veils
Until then I gather my harvest
wild nights belly laughs poems that sing
This one’s for Her
NAOMI RUTH LOWINSKY won the Blue Light Poetry Prize for her chapbook, The Little House on Stilts Remembers. She was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings Sun Shot Poetry book contest. Her fourth full length collection, The Faust Woman Poems, trace one woman’s Faustian adventures through Women’s Liberation and the return of the Goddess. A new collection of essays, The Rabbi, the Goddess and Jung: Getting the Word from Within was published recently. She is a Jungian analyst and blogs about poetry and life at www.sisterfrombelow.com.