Tag Archives: crossroads

umbral

31 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Hecate. Mother of the Moon. Hear me.

3 Fates. 3 Faces. Nighttide-bellower.

Thrice-voiced. Beloved of the Cemetery.

Mistress of Corpses and Fire. Bewitcher.

You, who Cronus gave the Underworld to.

You, who feasts among the graves; with this knife

I cut my flesh. 3 drops of blood might do.

Lover of Erinyes and Afterlife;

you face 3 Paths. Show me the 4th. Crossroads

form an X, show me the 5th. Blood umbral.

Mother mine. I am blind from Right-hand light;

from saints that rot, from angels that corrode.

Hecate: show me what’s veiled, nocturnal,

lustful; all that cavort in the moonlight.

fell

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

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“Does it help you to have a place to go?”
I had just lit all of the crossroad prayer

candles; just said, “I love you,” in their glow
and dusk fell and I glanced up to find her

walking into their light. “Where should I take
my mom’s ashes?” I hope that what I said

helped. We are all haunted with raw heartache
but few come to graveyards to ask the dead

for help. I don’t feel cast out in twilight.
It helps. In here owls love me and I burn.

Out there? I’m numb. I didn’t see her leave
or fade. She was just gone. Perhaps tonight

she will return with her ashes, return
to where we’re not forsaken when we grieve.

amenamair

30 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Armenian, Lilith, Poetry, sonnet, Translation

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Far more nervous for nightfall than I’ve been
for a while. Gloaming, some call it. The time

when paths open. — If I could leave my skin,
walk soft there, I would. I can’t. That sublime

skill is beyond me. The most that I do
is wait down by the crossroads for her guide.

Amenamair: a name the ancients knew.
The All-Mother. In last night’s dusk I spied

in the willow where her queer owl singsonged.
I have never been this close to an owl

before or had such a song burn in me:
“Amenamair. I have longed. I have longed.”

I long to leave my skin. I long to prowl.
I long to be your song in that dark tree.

Note:
Just as Odin, in Norse lore, is called the All-Father, one of the many names of Lilith, in Armenian (the ancient language that I keep going back to), is Amenamair (Ամենամայր), the All-Mother.