Falling down from Heaven’s gate
the sky burns my heavy heart
and freezes my skin like
a dead blossom in the snow
as the world of summer blue
rushes past my weightless form.

Damned by His word, forsaken by His children
and banished from His House of clouds and sunlight.
My white, feathered wings
fold around me like a cloak:
a blanket of memory
of a life once lived,
a bitter beauty
a poisonous flower whose mere touch is death.

I hit the water
like glass on cement
shattering, breaking, wilting,
surrendering under delicious pain.

The sea devours me.
I lay suspended in the perfect balance
of sea and sky
embraced by its harshness
flogged by its gentle grace,
as the constant swaying
smothers my shame, my hurt, my anguish
like a candle’s flame between my fingers.

The world slips past
lost forever in the depths
of the ocean’s tranquil soul.
Truth is gone,
the past erased:
there is only sea.

She cradles me in her arms
the Mother Sea
whose refuge I take from the Father:
the one who remembers
who counts all favors
who notes all faults.

But She who holds me now
She does not judge
She does not begrudge me.
How I long for Her unconditional love
for all Her children and theirs.
And as the water begins to take me,
the endless rhythm of the sea
beating in my ears like a drum,
the weight of grief, of longing
pulls me down to the bottom;
recaptured into the dark womb
born again without pain.

Her waves wash away my guilt.
Gone are the sins, the blemishes,
the shadows that haunt my heart.

No need for wings
no need for flight.
The only need is for the Mother
the Goddess who took me.
The Life-Bringer, the Death Crone:
She is one and the same.
Life is death, death is rebirth
weaved into circles
into currents, into waves
into the many folds
between sea and sky.