Demeter found me, or rather, I found her
when her tomatoes were nodding and green
under the shelter of the side of her barn
near an acre of fields, wild with an orchard,
the long grass pushing up under the trees,
and hyssop, bee balm, lavender, chicory,
mallow, johnny jump up, love in a mist,
coneflower, blackeyed susan, lavender, broccoli,
in her circular garden that curved from the earth.

When we walked up, she was crouched in that circle,
picking peas from a strong tangled vine.
I waited and watched, while her mountainous body
filled my vision until I was quiet,
and the arms of the planet held me alive.
Her hands were as wide, cool, and earth-stained
as mossy old rocks that a forest has patiently
grown up around, died around, fallen near.
and pulls through the earth. Then my body was hers,
spine in the planet, blood in the wind,
as she dropped the peas in the aluminum bowl.

Idly, I’d been pulling deeply
at some weeds growing down in the herbs.
I felt very tired, and very afraid,
and, suddenly, filled with the earth’s oldest memories.

I’d been invaded; the baby was not mine.
Why should I carry it? Coneflowers blew
fuschia and silent, as if there was laughter,
from the breeze that was suddenly simpler,
as if there could once more be joy. It had been
months since I’d felt like myself at all,
months since my life had moved for me.

I didn’t say anything, watching her shoulders
as she finished picking, and raised herself, squinting
at the sun stretching down on the garden.
“When my daughter Persephone was young,” she said finally,
“she cried every time I pulled weeds. It was hard
to see that. It’s hard to let go, but we need to.”

We went inside quietly, washed off our hands,
and that night I slept in the bed in her barn,
where dreams of the animals nuzzled and licked me
through my long dreams. I woke up with a road,
a path, and a promise. . .
I walked to the bus station, feet moving quietly
on the earth, the cement, and the asphalt,
eyes moving calm over trees, streetlights, buildings.

Excerpted from Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams (Red Hen Press, 2010)