Lifecycle Poem by Joanne Togati

Nature filled my breast when
I was 12 and full of 12 full moons
heavy like a silvery granite within the mountainface
closest to the earth as if hiding by its mother
Slightly older, I was seized by the echos of the deep caverns
and staligmites that were hung powerfully yet vulnerabally by their feet
foreshadowed my descent into the Hanged Man position
Large staligmites and still larger tears
the wolf in sheep’s clothing could eat me alive
had already done so in my dreams
and then followed into waking
but because I was nature herself
I was also his saliva and his guilty rushing heart
and the stream of yellow that exits to the sea
and there I slipped into my rebirth
Venus amongst the summer waves
and when nighttime fell in its habitual open ceremony
I stepped lazily from the sea with lapis at my feet and jade in my eyes
onto the sands of time
the kind that is only seen once before we die
At last, nature again filled my breast
agelessly,
and I was the bluebird
I had remembered in a tree when I was 5,
but I flew away not seeing my nest.