Celebrating Madness in the Middle of the Night   <back to Poetry & Essays main page

She dances in a mountain meadow
flush with green, willowy limbs
Soulful and soaring
Off the plains to catch the moon
In her breast.
Holy rain drips down
The meadow at high midnight,
Her body, a dappled liquid sight
Infused with mountain moonlight
Dripping silver dreams, tears
Of the Goddess.
She turned away from all that was comfortable
And in so doing,
Ascended her mountain, touched her madness,
Danced off the Plains
And planted the moon in my breast
As the holy rain dripped down
A mountain meadow in the middle of the night.

Moon-cradled laughter
Bellows from her Moon
As his motion rocks her deeper, higher
Touching stars and shattering earth,
An explosive aria—
Is this song that launches life
And touches death's ecstasy
The same song the sane world
Tries to anesthesize us from?

The moon drips down
And fuses him deep within her.
In so doing, she finds the secret,
The witch's formula, the alchemy of power—
Soft presence.
A laugh. A tear. A star.
A spin of color & cellburst in her womb.
Now.

The little girl emerges and dances in the meadow
Past ponderosas & alligator junipers, skipping to her
Own silver shadow. She holds
A locket in her hand, plucked
From the neck of the sky
At the very moment
She pranced on the ridge, naked.
Something came over her & inside her
And inflamed her heart with threads of light.
The little girl dances in the meadow
And catches her reflection in the locket:
The crown of Pleaides sits upon her head,
Atop her breast, moon glows
Into her high heart:

The center of the universe formed
In the middle of the night.