Heather Harris Bergevin
Lately I have been wondering
about the Goddess.
I see the men
with their wargodsstriving,
the animals they worship
and sometimes kill. They
carve their images into walls, paint
themselves into caves, and tell
me there is a Goddess, too-
but I cannot see her,
not in the temples,
not in the paintings,
not in the animals,
not in the warstriving
men and children of men and children
of Gods.
They sometimes
paint me on the wall, but there is little
way for me to see my own
eyesearsfacehips
body. I went this morning
to the inlet where
we gather water, and waded
knee deep to rinse my
aching self in the coolness still
glowing from night’s moon,
reflective. Then, standing, I looked
down, and laugh, staring,
at the ladymoon, at the
inlet, and my swinging, rounddancing
reflection.
Tonight I will carve
my memorized memorialized self,
all softness, all power, all
circlegreatness. In thousands
upon thousands away, men
will find my reflected image,
and wonder what Goddess
was so carefully carved as her own
worshipped Voluptuous deity?
…Perhaps, I see
the Goddess, after all, as we are
created in her image,
and our own.
Heather Harris Bergevin is the author of “Lawless Women,” with BCC Press, mother of three ridiculous minions, Maker, student, and geeky Southern Belle. She does not ever get the vapors, but knows how to tell a hawk from a handsaw, and how many angels dance on the head of a pin. She refuses to take much of anything seriously.