The Great Year: Age of Virgo, c. 13,000 - 10,800 B.C.

September 2016

The Age of Virgo

(c. 13,000 - 10,800 B.C.)

The months begin
and are like winter,
always longer than expected:
five months of winter, so you
long for it to end;
consider it
a time of rest and quiescence,
a time to turn inward:
add drawings to earth walls
white as fields--
grass brown in the cold,
and then disappearing beneath
more snow;
fields that are
austere,
the soul's condition
in winter.
The moon
cold and white
as earth,
it is also woman
round and open
unfolding secrets
of existence, repetition
of birth and death,
seasons, tides,
sunlight and moonlight,
planting crops,
bears hibernating
in caves, snakes
in a crevice,
deer's antlers
on the forests' floor:
this is the time
of silence, of
the soul's gestation--
at night
we see stars
moving in the sky.