Ode to The Queen of the Underworld

By Madelyn Soldner Sullivan

Persephone— your light runs deep at every spring-green maidens' feet.

Cathonic goddess, who dwells in depths of heavenly proportions kept, by light of love and dark of moon, you come to me in dreams-- of winter caves and earthly loam, my dearest ghostly Queen.

From misadventures' tragic threads you've spun your story thus: that all who fall or seek below will meet with their own death.

And if they be so brave and bold as to surrender to their fate, thus reborn from blood that's spilled they learn its ne'er too late

for sweet alchemy to slowly melt our loses into gold; as jeweled pomegranate seeds will sprout in Hade's realm alone.

Tis but a choice you alone must make to see your lot in life,

not as a blade that seeks to maim the victim in your head, but as a knife that cuts away all the fears that you’ve been fed

And offer them

by skin of snake and eye of owl

by hoof of deer and wing of bat

by tusk of boar and claw of bear,

To Hecate, crone mother

of our eternal tomb -- it's she who knows that wisdom's gold is finely wrought on the threshold of death's door--ancient mystery of the womb.

Tis only through conscious sacrifice

that we each might come back

to life, made Holy Whole

Thus transformed, Far better than we

New.

Real Beauty

By Madelyn Soldner Sullivan

Im not interested in pretty.

I want beauty.

Real beauty

the kind that sneaks up on you

That requires subtle

devotion.

The kind of beauty that belongs me

to this earth

And feeds the holy

unseen world

that gifts us

Life.

The grey aspen buds

of spring

could be so easily

overlooked

As ugly

or

unkempt

as the muddy shifting tides of winter

and summer whose

tug of war over the sun turns the ground

into chaotic raptured dance of change,

but to me they are beautiful.

And this mud-worshipper

is madly in love

with the grey

sweaty dawn

of spring’s flattened grasses

laced with brown snow

and leafless trees wrapped

in skirts of decaying frost.

This kind of beauty that is the pattern

the gravel makes in the grass

when all the snow has melted

Away.

This kind of beauty

that carves canyons out

of the earth and the edges of our eyes.

The kind of beauty

that takes

Time.