MOTHERLESS

 
 
Motherless

"I confess"--she begins, "I am in love with  Motherhood;

the holy spirit they refer to, that 'she' who's not above,

but sprouts from ordinary soil down deep beneath the fantasies they propagate, before those dogma-dreams

that sprawl and tangle, those weeds that choke the road."

We are in a forest glade ringed by hemlock, birch and elder.  It is Spring, a wet Spring glistening at dusk.  Fire at the center of the scene crackles on damp wood.  The odor of aromatic ash suffuses the air.  She is sitting in the shadows on a rock ledge, a bright white woolen blanket draped over her head, shoulders and body. Another someone stands behind her, unseen in even deeper shadows.

She rises, steps closer, and continues--"With umbilical still attached to all those fertile women whose bellies swelled, they who birthed the generations--I find an empty womb

this Mother's day to call my own, and resting fetal in it, commence my shameless celebration: Hail Hera, Diana 
and Demeter. Hail you chromosomes inclined to double ex-ing. Hail to Isis and Inanna. Hail Kali Ma, and all the many Marys. Hail unto the Morrigan and Ruth. All praise is due to each and every one of you, the nameless and the named, the zygote and the ancient crone."

Throwing pine cones into the fire, one for each name and two for the nameless, she repeats her incantation in the manner of a song.  Each pops and crackles, exciting the flame into rhythms of rising and falling.  A light rain begins, as clouds shroud the rising moon.
 
She slumps down to the ledge, gathering her covering 

close, and falls silent. Suspended in amniotic bliss, her

mind has drifted back through time--leaving this one ceremonial seed behind for some other 'she' to find.