The Great Year: The Age of Pisces, c. 100 B.C. - 2000 A.D.

The Age of Pisces

(c. 100 B.C. - 2000 A.D.)

Fish surrounded me
when I was a child,
even my mother's arms felt
wet and cold; I could taste
salt on my lips
and lay with eyes closed
and knew the world
was an alien place.
I was surrounded by fish
all of them with
faces resembling
mother, father,
wife, mother-in-law,
they were sharks, piranha,
salmon, cod, pickerel;
they swam
upstream in my veins
finding a pool of warm
liquid in my heart
where they flung themselves
violently--
what heartache they caused!
At night I prayed
to God, as though this life
would never end,
my prayers were
the sound of water running
in a river until
giant boulders
are worn smooth. Soon
I, too, went to sea
and became a fisherman;
in my small cabin
cluttered with books,
a copy of the Vinland
Map spread across
my desk, and over my bed
was an icon of Christ
in whose arms
I rested; His eyes
followed me
as I moved from one
corner of my cabin
to the next, sometimes
His lips moved
shaping something
resembling a smile,
and I could hear Him
speak, in ancient Aramaic,
words I could not
understand;
I threw sardines
to a school
of dolphins
that swam beside
my ship, then
caressed their sides,
their eyes filled
with compassion.
The sea
is a cathedral
whose ceiling
is the stars
and whose floor
the blue water--
sun or moon reflected
it is a mosaic
of silver tiles,
the kind seen
in Roman palaces,
dolphins frozen
in the ceramic waves.

The Great Year: The Age of Aries, c. 2400 - 100 B.C.

13 March 2010 

The Age of Aries

(c. 2400 B.C. - 100 B.C.)

The moon
blood red,
not with
harvest, but
like the earth,
with blood;
peaceful men
became warriors:
battering rams
at the gates.
In the night sky
Mars is near
the horizon,
the same sky
on land
as on the sea
where Odysseus
sailed;
someone asks,
"how could the goddess
not depart?"
Clouds
gathered
across the moon,
only a white circle
distant
almost disappeared
from the sky--
the sun, too,
is hidden
and everywhere
men leave home
to wander
and impose
their will.

The Great Year: The Age of Taurus, c. 4550 - 2400 B.C.

13 March 2010

The Age of Taurus

(c. 4550 - 2400 B.C.)

The bull silent
in an ochre coloured
field, genitals hanging;
the shadow
in moonlight
of one
whose body was a man's,
whose head was a bull's--
he fed on human flesh,
his image inhabits
every mirror--
our passions
are too great.
We each
have one song,
a chorus
repeating
our need for love;
oh, I am consumed
with betrayal
and darkness,
inhabiting
a labyrinth
and waiting
for my executioner
who even now
I hear trying to walk
silently around a corner
with a club and knife.

The Great Year: The Age of Cancer, c. 8640 - 6480 B.C.

13 March 2010

The Age of Cancer

(c. 8640 - 6480 B.C.)

We do not live
in caves, we visit
them as holy places--
each seed planted
is a new beginning,
and this is our desire:
the moon, the first
seed, erotic and glowing
in the night sky;
who could not be in awe
seeing the full moon--
stars disappear
and our homes
cast shadows
across the path
to the edge
of a forest or
the ocean's shore--
we visit caves
as sanctuaries
returning us
to what is lost:
a cave, the moon,
a woman's womb.
Floods cleanse
the land,
the soul
that watery element.
We place water
in bowls, seeds
in woven baskets,
the dead in graves,
live in settlements,
count seeds, trade
amulets, bracelets,
necklaces, female figurines
the size of your thumb--
the grave a container
for men, women, children;
bones with patterns scratched
on them, bodies positioned
in the earth containing them.

The Great Year: The Age of Leo, c. 10,800 - 8,640 B.C.

Age of Leo

(c. 10,800 - 8640 B.C.)

A lion is born
in the heart,
he walks at night
enters dreams,
and in our throats
when we wake
we seem to hear
growls, roars.
This is not
a time for prayer
or worship
of any god,
but knowing
an inner light
illuminating
consciousness,
as the sun
moves across fields,
mountains, lakes,
from morning rising
to evening sunset.
Here is the birth
of Apollo, somewhere
else Dionysus is born,
somewhere else again
Hermes and Osiris.
This golden age
when we found
light above our
heads, within
our souls;
and always
a lion waiting
in the distance.

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.