Rain and the Goddess
At 3:30 in the morning, there was only the Rain and the Goddess. I listened to both, one falling in torrents in the absolute silence and darkness, one speaking into my ear, “Shhhh, it’s okay…” I could have stayed awake until the dawn broke the night or until the rain stopped, but I didn’t want to see either light or absence. And so, I entered the bath. I hid away. One candle flickered and some nag champa, the heat, the caress of bodiless warmth.
There on my futon, or there in the water, or there in-between, there was nothing. I had no thoughts, no cares, no sound. I was in no place, had no time, breathed no breaths. And she surrounded me and fell about me in a hush of slow serenity, in an appeasement, a cooling of tongue fire, a calming of hurricane.
Tonight is very much like that, a slowness, a shuffle, a hazy ring around the moon, a cold, quiet thing. And in the morning, the last day of winter, the last feast of the crone. The maiden arises and the child runs through the melting fields. Tomorrow, she is with him. Tonight, we talk alone one last time.
Yes, girl, I call the moon mother too. You and I, one skin. For she is freezing white upon the ice lake, rising in steam, daring your lips to part. She is an overripe melon, juicy and succulent in the heat of midsummer. She is sliver thin, a waif wandering. She is darkest black, turns her back to enter the women’s hut and warns you not to follow, for strong is the monthly magic of moon and river.
Tonight, she wears a hoop skirt full of color and she dances the snake dance on the dry, brittle grasses. She glows with motion. She shimmers, old grandmother. Her bones, white bones, ache and yet she bends her knees low, she keens a last song for the dead ones and begins to flake her skin.
I realize just how much of a tornado are my thoughts, my mind, just how chaotic and busy, buzzing and churning, taking in and putting out. It’s moments like these three, early morning rain, the womb of porcelain and candlelight, the winter hush, that I hear myself think. It’s moments like these when She appears, the Goddess of my memory, the Goddess of secrets, the Goddess of “Shhhhhhh, love… Shhhhh”. Sometimes we watch the mother moon together. Usually, she comes and leaves within a few heartbeats. A touch, enough for belief to alight, two words and maybe a rustle of fur, maybe a flutter of feathers, maybe a fox mask… always leaving something changed behind.
Like you, it’s time for me to find the wolf that’s waiting. Too long have I let the storm of my mind rage like a wild crow trapped in a basement. This, too, is who I am, big pawed and big footed, teeth made for biting, shackles and blue eyes. This is who I am, running and hunting, rolling on my haunches, silence in the tree line, naked in the underbrush, watching steel-sensed.
I have chosen a way of wandering, not just once, but many times over. I have chosen a place that is no place and a continual redefinition, a continuum of inward and outward, of strong and stronger self-statement and self-creation. I am exactly as I am through all the choices I have ever made. So, instead of fighting against it, instead of seeking something different, instead of thinking back on what could have been, instead of looking forward on what might have been… no, not this time. I should just wake up, look around, and be it fully and with every last howl in my belly. If this is who I am to be, I’ll be it with all I am. And that is all she has ever wanted of me.
Mother, grandmother, sings and shakes her rattle, bows her head low, twists her skirts around. There is no sound in the night other than the rustling of dry tree limbs.
One last sighing, sweet-lipped kiss before the dawn.
