Coyote Stone

This is a small black stone, a focal point in the Worldweb,
a node of light—earth magic that can be carried in one hand.
Shaped by the hands of shamans, it is imbued by them
with their wisdom and power and it carries its own
integral wisdom, earth-knowing.

Out of a valley of death it came, carven with lines of power,
this small piece of black basalt called a ‘talking stone’—
repository of the wisdom of an ancient line, heritage of shamans. It teaches the mysteries of healing the earth and her children
and of the evocation of power.

This black stone, calls unto itself those who serve.
Its holder in now-time offers me this stone to touch,
to learn what I may. Before touching, I center myself,
feel myself rooted in the earth, know myself whole
and cradled within the Source.

Taking it in my hand, there is nothing, darkness
as black as the stone itself. I call the Master of the stone,
the archetypal indweller, guardian and dispenser of its power,
and I find myself in the world of the stone,
within the stone itself.

This land is scoured bare by wind and sun—
only the rocks and the earth live.
It is a twilight world of sun-below-horizon,
neither day nor night. In this not-light not-night
I see a figure before me.

Seated on living rock, he is dark, sinewy, skin the color
of old burnished copper, like the land itself. His face,
his head is that of Coyote—the wise one, the trickster,
the old one. He grins his feral grin at me, ears cocked,
alert, listening.

Casually, he tosses the black stone that we are within)
from hand to hand. What can I say to such a one as this?
I can only wait before him. He weighs me in his own balance—
a measuring incomprehensible to me.
I am not of his people.

Yet, I am a daughter of the Lady,
the Great Mother, priestess among my own,
and therefore to be considered, to be weighed
for an eternity in this place without time.
I wait.

Suddenly, he stands closely, so closely before me,
wild eyes, deeper and darker than starless space,
filling and holding my eyes as he thrusts
the black stone into the center of my heart.
For a timeless moment we are still

His hand is in my heart’s center, I do not breath.
Soundless thunder roars, resounding through me, echoing
into my past and my future. He vanishes,
leaving me within the stone, the stone within me.
And it calls to other stones in my heart.

They are murmuring their secrets, their mysteries,
to one another across the reaches of time and space
within me. Graven with spirals and marks of power,
visible and invisible, there are stones within my heart—
earthstones, heartstones.

There is the heartstone of the Lady of Callanish,
the keystone of a vaulted chamber at Maes Howe,
sacred and swept by northern winds. There are the cairns,
barrows, megaliths, and the living rock of places of power—
earthstones in my heart.

They speak to each other and to me
on levels too deep, too real to comprehend,
and I sense powerful forces moving within me.
The earthstones speak to me, and to each other,
wordlessly.

November 1984
in Earth's Daughter

Afterword...

Days later, I return
to the world of the stone-within-me.
Coyote takes my hands,
places them upon the living rock

of his world, and I see myself
in the world of the stone-within-me,
hands upon the living rock of the
world-within-the-stone-within-my-heart
and
within-the-stone-within-me-within-stone
hands upon living rock,
self within stone within self,
mirrored,
infinite and eternal.
He teaches interesting lessons
that
expand
one’s mind
in interesting ways.

November, 1984
in Earth's Daughter

Scrambled Eggs

Late
night
hours.
Dis-ordered images
in a tired mind:
serpents
smiling smugly,
acres of Aphrodites
anciently amorous.
Eros on an elephant
haniballing on.
Jungian synapses
firing archetypally.
Words jump fences,
juxtapose themselves
improbably in signs -
teratogenetic
horoscopes of sound
masquerade
as nonsense.
Symbols
of another reality,
by fatigue fragmented,
rise up babbling
in a semiconscious mind.
Chaos
must have been
something
like
this.