Strength in Cycles

She rises strong and true from the depths of the earth where she was helping souls to know, to realize, to cross over into new beginnings. 
She knew that her place was among both worlds and she stood strong and solid in the wisdom of the cycles of all life.*


Accepting love and grace from all around yet also from within, cradling her own face in compassion and hugging her Self in all its beauty revealed to the world without shame or embarrassment. 
She stands in confidence and sincerity as she steps into the light once more. 
A gentle smile curves her mouth as the branches of the underworld, rooted in time, become the fingers of expansion that encourage her and 
welcome all she brings of life and beauty into the footsteps of allowing, 
her prints barely visible yet a slight impression left behind to hold a few drops of mirror-water, 
a seed or two of scattered potential, 
and petals fall in her wake of the ultimate knowing that all hold dear and share. 


She is fullness and strength made of mud and water and warmed by sun, dried by air, held in space of infinite creativity. 
She brings a grace to every movement in each moment of now, for cycles can flow away before we are able to reveal ourselves and that moment is gone.
Yet in her solid form, she stands for each of us as guide and mother, sister and child. 
Where is the waxing and the waning of womb and wild? 
Right here.
She becomes our friend and Self as we feel her compassion for all.
Ever aware of the ebb and flow, she pauses. 
Her stillness envelops me and I am her, holding in loving arms the form that carries me through the cycles of world and these of inner growth or recession.


Once a statue shaped by loving hands, 
her eyes slowly open, dark and light the opposites of her orbs that see into my soul, 
and her smile widens, lips part to reveal strong white teeth reflecting her delight to chew upon the impressions of life before digesting their full flavor, 
as her arms drop away from her own form and she reaches out, open, inviting me into her embrace as the child becomes the mother and we come full circle.
Stepping out to honor. 
Climbing out of the womb of mother, out of the caves where lost soul-bits dwell in their dark nooks to heal or hide yet she makes them all whole to move on.
Child becomes mother as mother becomes crone until death and transformation borrow each of us from form and we settle into the expansiveness of space in a field of flowers where all is sweet and then we realize we never left at all.
For this aromatic pleasure dome is here all around us, we are indistinguishable from air and tree, fire and canyon, rushing rivers around tumbling boulders of former walls no longer blocking channels of love. 
We are already here. 
She smiles at our wonder. 
I have become her . . . I am beauty and grace and cycles of nowhere from here to there!
The impermanence swells within me and I give birth to new eyes, fresh vision, and the love of All rushes out upon the space around me in squiggles and lines, stories and experience, words of witness to all the joys of Light and Dark. 
I look down and I am her, made of mud and water, air drying in soft caress upon my heart and the sun warming my smile into realization. I have become the gift at the end of creativity, for I am the composition of life's cycles. I am her.


And I see her in all those beings around me, our vessels carrying sparks of love that shine through and all the colors of rainbow-clay around the world mix within the palette of her palm and . . . 
We are all her. 
We are One. 
Coming and going. 
Cycles.
__________________________
This piece was inspired by an image (top of this page) randomly chosen for a portal/prompt. The image is titled Persephone (c) Selina di Girolamo 1998 from We'Moon '00 --
*Also, while many people only know the patriarchal version of the myth of Persephone and Demeter, there is another version that is shared in Lost Goddesses of Early Greece by Charlene Spretnak that I had read well over a decade ago. That 'pre-hellenic' version of the myth is the one that emerged while I was writing the above.