Two Wild Women Walk Together

Wild Woman of the North

woke up her first morning

nestled into the root-bowl

of Grandmother Cedar.

Her first breath was

of salt and the sea,

and her glance opened

on giant pines

poking tall spires

through morning sea-fog,

and a great blue heron

picky-toeing his way

along the

water’s edge.

Wild Woman of the South
began her soul journey
beside the sea,
where her every dawn
saw the sun rise
from the bending bowl-edge
of a watery horizon
and her cheek was brushed
by the cold fingertips of
an on-shore breeze.                                         

                             

Wolf pups came

to entice her to play,

and they gambolled happily

together

on the

sandy shore,

turning over scuttling crabs,

clambering up

the molten rock

to poke

stubby fingers and paws

into the tummies of

retreating anemones.

They snacked on kelp

and fiddlehead,

and sipped dewdrops

daintily

from cupped salal.

The morning beach embraced her

when, as a wild child at play,

she lay upon the sand to peer

down tiny holes the crabs made

when the waves

chased themselves

back to their parent breakers,

or when she held a new continent

in her handful of silica

and shattered shells.

Growing wild

along the shore,

child of the forest,

lover of the sea,

she watched Brother Eagle

making lazy spirals,

wind-surfing the sky,

her teenaged dreams

flying along

on his feathered wings,

on mellow afternoons

when the tide was out

and fishermen

not yet home

from the sea.

And now it is

just before evening,

a rosy dusk

creeping across

the encroaching hills,

which blush rose-red

like a startled matron,

surprised

at her toilette.

A cyan sky of afternoon arched

its beautiful body

above her tangled teenaged head

and her back was turned

on the silver surf

as her path took her into the hills

and valleys of mist

where a smooth river stone

joined the creamy cowrie

she kept in her pocket.

The first star

of evening

turns her direction

homeward,

back to the sea-cave

where her family waits –

two now elderly wolf-pups

with grizzled muzzles,

who raise their heads and thump their tails

slowly,

when she appears,

and whose gaze never leaves her

as she prepares

the evening meal,

the meal that will be

their last together,

for her guardians

have now

grown old.

And now, at eventide,

the Wild Woman of the South

must watch the barrier of spears

prick the dying sun

until its inky blood flows over

mountain range,

and her unchained heart

cries out for the voice of the sea

to sing her to sleep

once more.

Towards midnight,

Wild Woman

stands alone

once more

beside the shore,

the only sound

the sursurration

of the lapping waves,

moving through her being

like a pulse.

Sister to the Moon,

her hair now

long and silvered,

she hears

an owl calling

from a nearby branch.

Bereft,

she sends

one keening

wolf-howl

of love and longing

into the midnight hills,

from the depths of her

Wild Woman heart

and waits,

it feels like forever,

to hear

an answer.

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written in collaboration with Kerry O'Connor at Skylover :
a poet extraordinairre I am proud to call my friend