Werewolf, Thunder and Other Poems - A Series by Adrie Rose

photo @lucahuter

Little pear, little light

bulb, little universe. You

have expanded to a watermelon

and back again, you

river each moon,

you have

forgiven me,

you begin anew,

you continue.

You cup of blood,

you coiled serpent,

you power they have tried

to bind.

I took in

what you insisted

on giving me.

I spun this wreath of songs

from that slag,

and since you created

this world of bills

and taxes, I insist

that you pay me,

and pay me double.

Werewolf

What if

the first ones

they so named

were simply women

who lived with the moon in their pocket?

Gathering power,

unforgettable and unrefusable

when traveling the fullness;

withdrawn and sharp

in the waning.

Little wonder

they fear us, sisters,

as they have always feared

what is willing to be changed,

feared the dark unknowable sky,

the blood

in the beginning and the end,

the passionate dark.

Grandmothers, hard frost is on the fields

and any treasures we have not gathered in

will soon be rot.

Not just the squash and tomatoes.

I have hung my bundles of thyme,

dried my sassafras leaves.

I am getting louder and louder.

All

that we have not carefully preserved

is perishing quickly.

Walk with me closely now.

I have gathered all you gave me

that was meant to continue,

and given the rest back to the earth.

Back me now, hold me now

as I go farther than you were able.

Fuel this light as I step forward

in the dark

and hold up my hands.

Thunder

my mother tongue

petrichor

my mother land.

Where are you from?

unanswerable

but this:

safety

was in the center of the storm,

lightning

never pretended

to be anything else.

Adrie Rose writes, works with clients, and teaches about herbs in unceded Pocumtuc and Nipmuck land (aka western MA).  She is a mama and a student of poetry and anthropology.