What the Muses Leave Behind

“Our species is committing suicide – that is a choice…”        -- Terry Tempest Williams Death might be just a holy rend                      a stitch of good luck, a weeping of snow melt. How resurrection prefers dirty water and pain, I’ll never understand. Her instructions comprise                    a tiny storm of mercy– full of crows and bottle flies,                                                                to debride the corpse,                                         ...

-- Women's March first anniversary 2018 Crone privilege abides here in the steady pour of the Mississippi. Her laughter, belly deep, shadows grackles and gulls, her inconvenience, forever indentured with her shoals, and her easy is fickle, full of silt and minnows. Crone privilege abides here. Out of the modern drudge, we know these truths: Wisdom is love, love is patience, patience takes its time. On the shoulders of old women, it pushes boulders up a hill, Defying the Sisyphean habit – they will roll it up and over, be done with that. Crone privilege abides here. Call us queen bees, a riot of pussies, hand maidens over done. Maya Angelou made her heart into a mantra, now when we straighten our backs, the chrysalis splits wide, and like cream on whiskey              we rise.

Maybe you believe this land is a tamarind rind                                          or geode hide,                                  or conundrum stubborn. Maybe it reminds you of a sleeping old dog, growling and mean with dreams of glory days and the chase. These hills and muddy folds of dormant agriculture                                                                 never heard of Persephone. Even Eden is a piece of gossip since John Deere and Massey Ferguson. The b...