Notes on The Yoni Rocks (1995)

The Yoni Rocks, 1995

Ed Varney’s cover art for The Yoni Rocks (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1995) is an image of the Venus of Willendorf, a small sculpture of a round shaped woman with big breasts and braided hair that is approximately 25,000 years old; this artifact from our prehistoric past has become famous since it was discovered in Austria early in the 20^th Century. The quotation at the beginning of The Yoni Rocks, taken from H.I. Austen’s fascinating book, The Heart of the Goddess, will better help to define the meaning of Yoni: “In Sanskrit, Yoni means ‘womb, vulva, place of birth source, origin, abode, home, nest; family, race, caste.’ It derives from a root word which means ‘to join together.’... For how can we love life if we do not love the yoni, the doorway through which all life passes?”

The Yoni Rocks has two sections, “The Yoni Rocks” and “The Heart of the Goddess.” These poems are concerned with the anima, the feminine part of the male psyche. The whole book is a hymn to the feminine, to the Yoni, to the unifying aspect of life. The title comes from a photograph in which some rock formations became a natural visual representation of the Yoni, so there was also the juxtaposition of something hard and ancient, rock, with something living, giving birth to life, and sexuality, the Yoni.

The Yoni Rocks begins with the funeral of one of my aunts, and then moves to memories of my paternal grandmother and her home, and the many things “home” represents: the feminine, nurturing, comfort, and so on. This is the divine feminine, but the feminine can also be dark, constrictive, and destructive; just read some poets’ work on their mothers. There is also the river, and the metaphorical qualities of rivers, that the same river cannot be stepped into twice, and so on. The second section of the book deals almost exclusively with romantic and sexual love, the meeting and relationship of the two sexes. Romantic love is, indeed, one of the most profound experiences that humans can have, whether it is ultimately positive or negative, for we abnegate our ego when it happens.

Another poem in The Yoni Rocks is about my paternal grandmother who will always have a special place in my heart and psyche. I often visit my grandmother’s home—on Girouard Avenue in Montreal, where she lived for forty years—in dreams or drive passed on my way to work. When I was a child my family lived for two years at Grandmother’s Girouard Avenue flat because my father was not well. Later, I had many happy days when I would visit my grandmother and her two old sisters, my great aunts Essie and Edna. Her home is the psychic center of my imagination and she, herself, is someone I loved dearly. For me, Girouard Avenue is the home of the Grand Mother, a place of ancestors, love and kindness, and the beginning of my journey in life.

As well, and of enormous importance in my life, has been my relationship with CZ who returned me to life, who animated me, after years of not being fully alive. The Yoni Rocks is dedicated to “the three important women in my life: my grandmother, my mother, and my wife.” Whether for good or otherwise, knowing these three women has made my life the journey that it has been and still is. Knowing CZ, my wife, is something that doesn’t need to be discussed here but is celebrated in the following poem, also in The Yoni Rocks:

Reincarnation

1.

We meet again, again flesh

and blood, again bone, tendon

and memory. Events of old lives,

clothes divested as I divested

the past in meeting you,

in meeting you again

and again and again

into infinity.

Forty years of waiting for you,

a dark delirium of the soul;

we met apparently for the first time

but home is where we are together

in this room, this house,

the two square feet we occupy

in a single embrace. The embrace

of memory, bred in muscle, eating

or favouring one side in sleep,

falling asleep in your arms.

The arms of many births,

deaths, incarnations of

gods and goddesses,

Bardic voices, Druid's potion.

Listen, we share the sounds and sights

of a summer's evening, fireflies

across a field seeming

distant but as close as

a hand before your eyes,

breath on the back of your neck,

or is it the darkened field

and firefly lights

repeating their journey

between this life and that?

With you I have

returned home, not a place

walls enclosing silence,

but soul meeting soul

in the ancient movement of time.

I lie asleep on the floor

ear pressed to the darkness

and hear the hum of earth,

the generations of families, priests,

and existence of all living things

like listening, ear to a pregnant

woman's belly, baby's rapid

heart beat; shadows fall hundreds

of feet, listen into the soul

of man preparing for its journey

of final sleep, we came

from here and return, forgetful

of our origins, or of the

father and mother who created us.

Here is the title poem of The Yoni Rocks:

The Yoni Rocks

Who would deny us the Yoni rocks,

who would keep us from

hearing Mother's voice?

Who would deny us death,

the rocks that are tombstones:

father's grave lies bare,

a rectangle of grass where

soil separates us; it is more

than soil, but time,

sorrow, and grief.

The men I never knew, Father,

stepfather, my father's father,

the others distant.

So now I return to mother,

returning home, the hidden dream

of home. It is from the mother

that we come, to the earth

that we return. Cleft-divided,

rocks in the hot sunlight

by the ocean, where the iguana

are motionless.

I am drawn to her presence, to

a hymn to woman,

birth, death, the goddess

coming from the earth

and moon, held captive

in moonlight, a perfect

roundness of completion.

She is my seed and bone, my

entrance into life; age four

I lay between my parents,

Father asleep, and Mother,

smiling, said "kiss your

father." Later I slept

with Grandmother and Aunt Mable

at their country home,

lay between them, my head

at their feet making room

for three in one bed. We are three,

a trinity of man, woman,

and child.

Vulva shaped rocks,

the Yoni Rocks, shells,

clams moving on the river's

sandy floor leaving

a trail twisting, straight,

or circular in the sand;

the sun entering the sky

from beneath trees

on the horizon. Mother

is the most beautiful

woman I remember thinking,

long brunette hair, as I lay

in a pram on Girouard Avenue

just a hundred feet

from Grandmothers's flat,

living there when Father

was ill. Mother

was the most beautiful woman

to the child who lay

staring at her as though

only we existed, no other existed

in that enclosure of mother, father

and child. So now I seek to lie

beside you, fear losing you,

as I have been left before.

Now the Yoni Rocks

are a doorway

to the inner life,

as before conception

and birth, before emerging into life

in blood and salt and air;

always fearing the return,

dissolution into nothingness

and fear.

2.

Our ship did not break like waves

on these rocks, rocks that gave us

life; these rocks were stars,

meteors fallen in the night

waiting to cool from their

entry to our world, we saw

them lie almost invisible

half buried in sand and water

cooling in the summer night.

White caps are an old

woman's white hair, twisted

and tied into a bun, faces

seen in clouds when a child,

a horse pulling a milk wagon

on Oxford Avenue in 1957,

Archibald Lampman's:

Tonight the very horses springing by

Toss gold from whitened nostrils,

moved by these lines age sixteen.

Who would deny us the Yoni rocks,

who would deny us poetry, the intimate

square feet we inhabit,

a rectangle of grass, a triangle

of birth, the brown mouse

and codfish, separation

and reunion, sky and earth,

northern lights in July when sailing

at 2 a.m., fireflies on a June evening

when out for a walk with you?

We return to ourselves, to the

woman a man is always beside, or

the man the woman is beside.

Who would deny us hearing Mother's

voice, your touch, or the silent

presence of Grandmother

always with me, always close

with her white hair, cotton

print dress and black shoes,

not a farewell

but this presence ending grief.

(Stephen Morrissey, The Yoni Rocks, Empyreal Press, Montreal 1995; ISBN 0-921852-07-X; The Shadow Trilogy, including The Compass (1993) and The Mystic Beast (1997), was published by Empyreal Press in Montreal.)