Poem of the Day: "Apotheosis" by Shannon Connor Winward

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present "Apotheosis" by Shannon Connor Winward.  Ms. Winward's poetry has appeared in:  Pedestal Magazine, Strange Horizons, Fairy Tale Magazine, Literary Mama, Hip Mama, Star*Line, Illumen, Ideomancer, and Dreamstreets.  Her debut poetry chapbook, Undoing Winter, is available from Amazon.com, Finishing Line Press, and from the author at www.shannonconnorwinward.com.  Ms. Winward lives and writes in Newark, Delaware.

Apotheosis
Shannon Connor Winward

If I take

the moments of my life

tie them to each other, neatly

and the axis of experience

perhaps the colors would stream

from heaven, down

 

we could each grab a ribbon

and chase our tails

around and

around and

 

perhaps

in a backwards glance

we might see the Maker there

come to join the procession

 

to drink the voices

to laugh in the recesses

of our sight

to desire

and then

to be gone

 

slipped inside

through the breath

like the presumptuous

spirit He is.

 

I say

fine.

Let Him in.

 

I will run faster

on the petals of offerings

I will trail my billows behind me

like a scent

 

I will say

catch me if you can.

 

(but don’t look back - no

to look in the

face of desire

is to see the spiral.)

 

If you enter me,

Sky-Father

you’ll find that it gets dark in here

if you take me, perhaps

I will leave you to stumble

in the caves of the human mind

 

these tired themes of life

we spin around, and

around

these memories and colors

will sing you in circles.

 

Father of Riddles, how you panic

inside what I know.

 

When you are lost in the pattern, perhaps

I will come inside you

I know well that I can

You forget, Maker,

who made you

 

I remember

having to relearn it every time

a woman bears me.  She calls me daughter

but you were gone

long before that naming-day.

 

Perhaps

I will remind you. 

 

Come inside.

When the dawn intrudes

and I rise up from the dirt

my ribbons in shreds under my knees

and you are gone

 

perhaps, this time

I will have engendered

You.

Poet's Notes:  I am a spiritual person, but my faith has always involved ambivalence – a (justifiable, I think) pissed-offedness at whomever/whatever is responsible for this beautiful mess of humanity.  

Even if you buy the idea of a higher purpose, mortality is an awful thing.  I have at times imagined Deity as an absentee father, a blithe spirit, a self-absorbed hedonist with a trail of broken hearts and broken bodies in His wake… 

 

On the other hand, I'm a lover of myth, a Jungian fan-girl, and generally in favor of free will.  The Creative Principal may be primordial, but religion is a human invention.  We make our own way; we tell our own stories.  I think we are as responsible for our gods as they are for Us – at least our understanding of them and how they manifest.

 

"Apotheosis," (which means "elevation to divine status") is a sort of playful/not-playful exploration of what it means to be engendered, begotten – created – in this sense.  The maypole, with its piquant pagan symbolism and sexual overtones, just sort of rose up (see what I did there?) as a natural motif in the original draft, which was originally titled simply "Freedom".

 

At heart, "Apotheosis" is a Declaration of Independence – insofar as one can meaningfully thumb her nose at God. 

Editor's Note:  I find this poem to be an interesting take on philosophy's age old question of who created whom, with a sprinkle of refreshingly not in-your-face feminism.  "Apotheosis" was first published in NewMyths.com in December 2011.