Standards

You learn about this strange place

from  birth  -- journeying there

through the  middle earth  of yourself.

 

Not the topography

of muscle and sinew, tissue and tributaries

of veins or nerves. That reef of growing bones.

 

No,  this about the green hill

with sea winds surrounding its henge.

A girdle of standing stones

                     ( too large to wear

except for the mother goddess)

 

and how it holds in

what is sacred, durable

               despite tremors or storms.

 

How light enters on a slant

blessing each slab with a perspective;

and how the girl wears its shadow

 

having been inside, having felt

the weight of  her wilder will

           lighten, lift as mist

toward the ocean. The tide rampant

with  scavenger birds  pecking

at  what floats in the shallows,

 

what slimes in the pearlessence

of a shell.