Tag: archetypes

Equinox Lovesong During Late Stage Pandemic

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After the windstorms, we wake
to snowslides of petals on the grass,
First loss of the season, these lung-soft ghosts.

Fire-striped tulips affront our sorrow,
waving their wild colors as we pass.
After the storms, we awaken

to what we should have known,
that the first kiss could also be the last.
Memories linger like soft little ghosts.

A flotilla of pollen cloaks the lakeshore, 
concealing the water glass surface–
opaque in the storm’s wake.

We used to fear a certain swimming-hole,
so dark, where the children might slip from our grasp.
Time has turned our fears into mean little ghosts

that drag us down like an undertow,
our breath heavy in the laden air.
After each rainstorm we’re awake
to a springtide of loss, these sallow ghosts

This poem is a variation on a villanelle I started a few years ago during April and that I recently revised a bit.

Dark pools of water show up frequently in my dreams, and they show up in my poems, as well.

Sometimes I see animals coming up out of the water such as alligators. In general, when I see dark, murky waters in my dreams, I think I’m dealing with the unconscious mind, memories I might be afraid to look at.

But if I do manage to sit with the fears during the dream, the water sometimes will become clear and the creatures inhabiting the dreamscape become colorful and whimsical, not at all scary and creepy.

My poem doesn’t get past the fears as the speaker contemplates loss of petals, the memories in the dark pools of water, and in the background, the loss of so many lives to covid.

Sketchbook/diary

Foxes, Archetypes, and Escape

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Lately I’ve been thinking about foxes. While walking my dog Red through the neighborhood, we saw (or smelled from Red’s point of view) a fox sunning itself in the middle of the street with a carefree attitude. It lifted its hind leg to scratch an ear as we approached. The mail carrier driving by said he sees that fox and others regularly in different parts of the neighborhood.

A large tract of farmland adjacent to our suburban street was sold a few years ago. A sizable woodland was plowed over and turned into another subdivision, so many of the animals that used to live there have had to migrate. In the last week or so I’ve encountered, wild turkeys, coyotes, Canada geese, mallard ducks, and now, this fox.

My good friend, probably the one friend who has helped me the most to get through this pandemic in a creative and soulful way, taught a few of us how to draw a fox, and as usual, I combined my drawing with words and images inspired from archetype decks.

Fox as shapeshifter, shaman, an elusive, cunning, trickster
A more traditional fox combined with the archetype “Myth”

In western folktales, the fox is often depicted as the villain who violates the hen house, or else the concept is applied to women as “foxy ladies” in songs.

I’ve read a bit about the Japanese tales of the kitsune, and a while back I wrote this poem below that incorporates one of kitsune stories. It doesn’t feel like a finished piece to me, and I’ve since poached lines from it to include in other poems, but it does speak to a certain desire I’ve always had to journey on my own, to enter the wilderness of the world as a solo entity without protection from the structures of society.

The Fox Wife Leaves Her Husband a Note On the Kitchen Table

How to explain this need to flee our home.
She might have entered the half-moons of my fingernails
Or could it be that, when I unzipped my human sheath
To find her in my body, she had always lived here.
When the dog bared its teeth and growled
You laughed it off, but she, the one inside me,
Stopped eating. Sleepless, she stares
At the silhouette of pine branches under the moonlight, 
blue-black fan of needles on the hard snow. 
I've asked her not to leave, this fox inside me, 
but once a dog bites, it doesn’t forget the taste of blood. I’ve left milk and rice for you and the boy. 
Remember to make a paste of his meat before you feed him.
One night, I might return, if the vixen in me desires.