ANTEDILUVIAN GODDESS

By GABRIELLE LEAH NEW

Black envelops and swallows

Abyss, holes in space, Caves, bowels of the earth

The antediluvian goddess emerges from the calyx of a Lilylike flower

The Queen of Heaven, of need and desire

The Queen of the dead, the harvest, the fire.

The Spirit of life, subtler and more lucid

She exists before the creation of light

She remains audible only to sages.

An ordinary woman in an attitude of prayer

Cradled in her arms a child

At her feet the crescent moon

Cradled in her arms a corpse.

Grimm unsettling dreams she finds herself

A chilling vision of transformation

The loveliness, the fearsomeness, the portentousness of its

Measured concealments and revealments

At once charming and grotesque

Alludes to the mysteries of descent and resurrection.

A line drawing traces a path

Ascending to the celestial realms.

A series of trials marked by sand, water, lightning and cloud.

Naked but for her ornaments

A feeling of mystery and warning.

Suggestive of the rolling cosmic seas,

the eternal, the never-ending

She is revealed in a pose of dancing.

Thousand-rayed existing in a hundred forms

Watch, now, now as I start the day

Running like a herd of luminous deer

Stepping lightly between not there and here.