How Long?

image borrowed from bing

How Long?

“How long will prejudice blind the visions of men?

Not long--no lie can live forever.”--Martin Luther King

My neighbor’s canine howling at sirens

reminded me of dogs as daemon,

companions and heralds for Hecate.

I have a memory of a tall tombstone

in an ancient cemetery, sculpted

with Hecate’s form in tripartile,

three separate, yet conflated, figures--

two with torches, 

one with a great key,

chthonic triplets lighting the way

to the underworld;

godmother,

earth mother,

companion spouse;

the sweetest of spiritual nannies 

dispatched for gentle transitions,

fully restoring the matriarchal magic

to cushion the various dances of death;

benevolent guardians who easily

eradicate the malignant memory

of MacBeth’s wicked Crone,

who tempted him into madness,

Hecate’s influences are felt across the labyrinth 

of history, her image found on thousands

of terra-cotta vases and statuettes,

and residing in old prints illustrating

her nubile followers devouring dogs

fresh from flaming bothros.

Only brightly-coiffed tender-hearted Hecate,

the single daughter of Persaeus, heard

the girl from her cave.--Hesiod.

Like the lonely sailor with Mother tattooed

garishly on his forearm,

like the sad soldier mired 

in the machinations

of Boot Camp, waiting 

for a letter from home,

in lieu of accepting 

all those simplistic sentimental remarks

in literature and greeting cards, I

have always felt totally absorbed by

my unabashed adoration of women;

too often becoming moody & surly while

still waiting for the eventual total equality

of the sexes, in all their various guises,

wondering how many of my past lives

were spent as a woman, or has it

always been just my re-colored pragmatic

emotional adjustment to losing

my own mother at a young age?

Glenn Buttkus

January 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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