by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, from the book Your Face in the Fire (2024)

Full Circle with Goddess

            for Judy Grahn

When I take your goddess incantation   off the shelf

where She’s lived   in relative obscurity   for over forty years

wandering the wilds   at the back of my mind   while I sit

among decades of notebooks   The Collected   The Selected

myriad voices   who sing me   into my self

I suddenly hear   Her holler   She WHO

She   she She   she She   she WHO?

How could I forget   What a wallop She packs

howls   hoots   questions   answers

a Goddess of breath   of high desert wind

wind off the lake   wind on the mountain

blows off   the top of my head   I’m hanging on

to the tail of a tiger   whipping me back

to that twenty something   I was

when I stood on a stage with you    Judy

howling   hooting   asking   answering

It was Berkeley   1972

We’d all suddenly remembered   the one we forgot

who cradled us   though we denied Her

for we had not yet grasped   that small clay goddess

from Willendorf   who fits   in a woman’s hand

You conjured Her   Judy

She Who turns things over

The earth opened    It was our period

We raised our fists    We wanted the moon

and the moon wanted us

Everything changed    Nothing changed

What happened   to that radiant glimpse

did She slip   out of our grasp   like a waning moon

while Big Oil drilled down deep

because power is power

because nothing is sacred

when all that counts   is speed   is greed

yet each of us   still goddess bound

made the descent   down   below down   into menstrual mind

Me   tracking our mothers’  mothers’  mothers

into the forbidden   where She Who reigns

You   riding the moonboat   into long ago

where a girl sits   in the dark   of her first blood

bearing the chaos   creating the world    Ah Judy

though we never met again    have we not come    full circle

are we not olden olden olden

are we not belly full   of wise blood

are we not heart sick    with dread

watching the chaos   take over our world

She Who floods like a river

packs a wallop    when she’s wounded

She thunders    roars    runs rivers through the skies

runs hot    runs cold    runs dry     Breathes   fire

Where is home?

She Who is the first person to no other

takes me back    to our fore   mother

the one in the cave    painting

the galloping    poetry mare    you still ride

I still ride    her mane flying

in the wind off the lake

We’re both hanging on