I’ve seen the horrors of the wasteland yet to come
The famine spoken of
I believed I was bound to repeat them.
But frustration screamed rivers
Rivers running through my bloodstream.
Ferocious as the forest fire in high winds
I seering, seering, Saw
I can make nothing better by speech alone
Risking as I speak, -the madness.
Consciousness is not a constant thing
Though a continuous vigil.
Ours is a time of sewer landscapes
Removed as we on concrete shores
From the truths nature teaches.
I’ve seen the miniature
The smaller canvas in you and I
Mirrors turned to doubles
To see in four to the other side.
Dual dilemmas
Dialectical pulls
Rip through my heart.
I follow through
Pushed down to the deepest dark
Past the guarded secrets I am led
Guided by the Old Mysteries
I am vomited up again
In relief, I traverse the earth.
To see you, see you clearly
See you in peace or see you in war
I see you are at the crossroads.
You may go the terrible way,
by the light of the blood burning sun
We may become, scorched earth in famine and drought
If you deny the forces of water
If you kill the rain making powers
The sources of moisture! The feminine powers!
Paused at the brink,
You are the final link caught in reason
Dying to believe only what you see in concrete
A masculine bias.
This epic has been told and retold
before the Hebrew or the Greek
Through time in other weaves
other languages
Sounding the same struggle.
The door is opening
Come, watch me weave
I am mending as my grandmother used to.
Join me with your tools
In this a woman’s labor
Each new weave, better teaches us the old.
Don’t be afraid,
Come, take the passion fruit
Ripe and ready
Come Eat my Roses
Dive into the face o f Love
Touch the blood of passion
As it drips from the cup.
© Louisa Calio 2016
*A longer version of this poem was first published as “Cassandra’s Visions” In The Eye of Balance New York: Paradiso Press, 1978.
See( Meet Mago Contributor) Louisa Calio