White Wolf

White wolf comes to me with blue eyes
and a masculine steadiness.
His gaze regal and pure:
all snow, two crystals of sky.

The same way I met the king in my dream
as tendrils of wounds unwrapped themselves
from my wrists: pure, powerful, unmovable.

He brings me coolness, after years of heat.
The pulse of my ancient fire so hot, so alive
and impassioned; I was the black goddess
with eyes of smoke, banging my fist
against the underside of the world, to swallow whole countries
with my fury.

White wolf quiets me with his not-speaking,
invites me into a world so cool and clean
I forget there was ever a story bad or good,
difficult or easy.

In his eyes, we have always been equals.
And my femaleness has always been sacred.

Above, white owl wheels in a white sky,
visible only as motion
and flecks of brown:
dark constellations.

The story so far away: tiny ants
I could blow and reassemble.

I did so much work to heave skeleton woman
out into the light. I dove for her beneath black
currents, wrangled her bones out of the deep,
hauled her up to the shore.
She was as heavy as ten thousand women.

How long did I sit by her side, keeping watch?
How long gathering wood and blowing the embers of that night fire?

I can't remember.
All I know is that the moment has arrived
that was written in my heart when this all began.
The moment I rescued her for,
as a caterpillar enters the cocoon
and surrenders to the brutal death
of her cells, with nothing but the spark
of a belief in magic.
Recognition of her true nature: the sun,
kissing the curves of her downy nest
saying “I see you.”
And the wings that wake up
as if out of nowhere.

Everything is pure light as I open my eyes
again in the snowy garden.
It fades and I see him there,
a man now, simple and beautiful.

He is every man I have ever loved
and will ever love.

He bends over me and takes my hand,
seeing and seeing me again and again,
neither penetrating nor relenting.

I see that beneath lifetimes of misunderstanding,
a golden thread has been kept alive, thin as a fishing wire,
but strong as All that Is, and here
under his gaze, the soul of my soul
remembers:

He can meet me.
All of me.

In the dreamtime the fisherman bends toward
the dry skull of Skeleton woman and cries a tear
upon her bones. With his kiss her flesh
like the flesh of my own luminous architecture
grows and blossoms, smooths, alights.

I had tried to live a small life
after my flesh grew back,
but it is hard to walk amongst skeletons
and pretend to be dead.

I had tried to make my life fit into a house
the size of my thumb-nail.

And now that the butterfly has emerged,
what does she want?

Sometimes she can sit still, like an eye
that gazes deep, long and steady.

Sometimes she tumbles through breezes,
dipping her tongue into one brilliant flower after another,
lingering as long as she wants in the mixture of elixirs.

She tastes them all.
She does not hold herself back.
You see: the flowers would never hold her hostage.

This is what white wolf tells me with his eyes,
as I release the shackles with my melting heart.
Over and over the world receives her
over and over it offers its sweet nectars
without judgment or possession.

Over and over in an ecstasy of belonging.

So engrossed in the goddess,
I failed to see how big the god could be.
His feet, his hands, his eyes, his mouth:
everywhere.

He reminds me I could not betray him,
even if I tried. That the only way to betray him
would be to betray myself.
That the more I love
each little cell of his handsome body
in all of its diverse forms,
the more he will blissfully be filled up
again and again
with the blessing
of the goddess.