Sedna

Virgin, girl.

in a life-boat of yoni shape,

courageous,

I reached

to grab the lightning,

to calm the storm.

Chopped off,

My fingers swam away,

becoming all the beloved

creatures of the deep.

Regaining balance,

I dived down

to Mother all My lost children,

Queen of My beautiful

under-water realm.

Now I Am Crone,

mad as octopus Medusa,

seaweed hair a tangle!

Like a seal I have no fingers.

Help Me comb My hair

(continents of incontinent plastic floating!

everything polluted, tarnished, endangered,

abused, a man-made mess!)

Water is Life! Honor the Sacred!

My story isn’t over!

I Am She Who is Enough!

My energy for Good is boundless!

Where to start to clean disgrace?

I’ll use My many arms (star-like)

to grab a hold of things,

some way, not some day,

now!

___________________________________________________

Sedna the Creator is everything She has always been

(How could She be less?)  but Her fingers are gone.

Like a seal She has lost Her fingers. She has been abused.

The bottom of the sea is a great forest with creatures like jewels

but a shadow has fallen across the bottom of the sea.

Sedna’s long hair was once glossy and beautiful,

black as the raven, flowing like the waves of the sea.

It was once Her great delight to comb it, in the old days,

when She was Land Girl, in the first days when there was no night.

In those days She made all the land animals and plants,

delighting in weaving their stories together with Her nimble fingers.

Pleased with Her work, She rested.

Letting the sunlight weave rainbows in Her eyelashes,

She fell in love with the Great Rainbow Dog

that pulled the sled of the sun.

She called to him, and so great was Her beauty and power

that he left the sky and came down to Her.

It was for love that Sedna built the first shelter, rainbow woven,

and lay inside it with the Sun Dog.

It was for love that She birthed the first humans

and nourished them in that first long night.

In Her love and bliss and forgetting, Her dreaming,

that first night grew too cold and stormy, too much to bear,

and all of life, deprived of sun, froze and withered.

To save Her children Sedna awoke,

and taught them to make the first womb-like boat of skins.

She went out to the middle of the sea to calm the storm

so the Rainbow Dog could pull the Sun across the sky again in peace.

All things were coming into balance, centering: day and night; 

north, south, east and west, above and below danced together.

But Sedna Herself (How did it happen?)

lost Her balance and toppled down into the sea.

Perhaps She was distracted in Her great calming and balancing

by the sounds of Her land children arguing

whether to hope or despair.

Perhaps She slipped reaching to grasp the lightning,

and it was the lightning that cut off Her fingers.

Her fingers swam away as seals and whales and fish.

A farewell gift, they fed the land children

in the hard winter of night

that balanced the plentiful summer of day.

I will not blame the Old Man, as some old stories do.

It is too late for blaming.

At the bottom of the sea Sedna found a new family to delight Her.

As rainbow threads of rippling sunlight caressed Her

with memories of the Sun Dog’s love,

with squid and octopus as fingers

She wove the basket of life in the sea.

She wove an underwater tapestry of beauty: 

light and shadow and color.

But now a shadow has fallen across the bottom of the sea.

Boats with oil come spilling, boats with garbage come,

boats with toxic waste come secretly,

dumping, dumping in the night.

Species are lost and dying and weak.

The smog is so thick in air and water

that the loving rainbows of the sun no longer reach Sedna. 

Sedna our Mother weeps salt tears at the bottom of the sea.

Her heart has grown dark and cold and old.

The water is becoming foul, the future is in danger,

and Sedna has no fingers to comb Her hair.

We have forgotten the songs She sang in Her joy

that first long night of love. We have forgotten the songs

She beat on the drum of Her belly when She carried us,

the steps She danced when She birthed us,

the songs She crooned when She nursed and rocked us,

the games and dances and arts She taught us in our childhood,

the ways She taught us to honor Her spirit that lives in all things.

We have forgotten the mighty song She sang to clear the sky again.

The memory of the songs are locked in the broken piece of soapstone,

in the frozen chunk of ice that is our heart. 

We have forgotten the reverent carving that could set it free.

Yet sorrow carves us, and sorrow, the teacher of joy,

shall wake us from our sleep.

Our dreams will teach us songs as we turn our back on the ways

of ugliness, waste, greed, hate, addiction, despair and death.

We must honor day and night, life and death, joy and sorrow,

individuality and family, creativity and heritage:

these will be the rhythms of our healing drum

as we walk a path of beauty through a modern world in ruins.

We must make a comb of wood or bone or shell,

a comb of plastic will not do,

to comb the tangled black hair of Sedna our Mother.

Our songs will comb out Her hair in our hearts.

With gratitude and with thankfulness we will comb Her hair.

When Her hair is clean and shining again,

the seas will be sparkling and full of fish again.

Cleaning and healing the earth, cleaning and healing ourselves,

we will sing Her praise again.

She was Avilacoq, the Land Girl once, in endless sun.

She was First Mother once, in endless night.

She was Sedna, Sea Mother once, in rocking balance.

She is old and lost to us (Arnakuagsak) frightening and frightened,

now alone at the bottom of the sea.

But the dawn comes born anew out of the bottom of the sea,

just as sun and Sun Dog sink

into the loving embrace of the sea at dusk.

She gave us the teaching of balance,

and She is waiting for us to learn what She has taught.

Shall we despair when the night sky is dark?

Or shall we let the dark moon be our teacher?

What will Sedna’s new name be

when our yearning for renewal

helps Her turn toward new life and light,

emerge, lighten up?

Will She grow new fingers?

(Why not? The starfish do,

combing the kelp from the tresses of the sea.)

She needs our fingers now; we need Her courage

to weave us a life-loving future,

to bake us the thin, healing moon-wafer

beginning here and now.

(O many-armed weaver, Spider Grandmother,

help Your Sister to save the children!)

Every new child born brings to us ten perfect fingers

curled in trust around one of ours,

ready to be taught the tasks of healing.

Lift a shell to your ear and listen

to the deep sonorous spiral teaching

of Sedna the Life-Giver,

Sedna the Woman Changing.

______________________________________________

Starfish, stretch your arms

in all directions, craving contact.

Now your tips are gone.

(Sedna also lost Her fingers. Venus de Milo lost Her arms.)

Resentment rumbles,

"Why grow, only to be cut down again?"

You've missed the point!

Reach deep inside to find the Center of Renewal.

Creativity needs sensitivity,

needs dexterity, needs courage.

Touch Beauty, and caress Her many faces.

Hand of peace, emanating healing,

radiate your beauty from your heart of star!

_______________________________________________________________________

    1

Bend your fingers down; fist-feel with Sedna.

Like seal, like whale, She has no fingers.

(Some say Her murderous father

cut them off with his fish-knife

as she tried to climb back in his boat after he pushed her out.

But don't believe them.)

In Her own womb-boat, rocking,

She reached out bravely (with Her own starfish hand)

to catch the lightning and quell the storm.

She lost Her balance (We have lost our balance.)

Losing Her fingers (She fell? A falling star?)

She dived! And Her fingers swam away, seals and whales.

Her blood-drops swam away, constellations of fish,

seeding the ocean with all life.

Place all your knuckles on your center forehead.

Gently draw your hands apart and down your temples,

painting a healing rainbow,

opening your third eye of vision,

opening to your ocean depths, reflecting stars,

diving deep in Her to find again,

deep in the Center's watery abyss,

the primal balance that renews the world.

                            2

Mermaids are vain with comb and looking-glass,

wearing tresses instead of dresses

(something fishy down below.)

Sedna has seaweed in Her hair

and She has no fingers! (What else is She missing?)

She rakes Her hair; She tears Her hair.

Look what they've done to Her crystal world!

Sisters, we can comb Her hair

with caring and with sharing.

We can soothe Her stormy tears

with lullabies of love.

Sure, the ocean's been trashed,

But we've all been there. What girl hasn't?

Let's have a hug, a cry, a laugh,

a whale of a time wailing,

then we'll clean up the mess together.

Soon isn't soon enough, now.

                            3

Squint in the sun, and let your lashes

weave rainbows, magic shelter, igloo made of light!

Sedna once slept with the Sun-Dog

who pulls the sled of the Sun.

She was young then, but rainbows remind Her,

of the glory of it, those wild days of indolent freedom!

Moon-Womban with Her menstrual (bloody!) tides,

lunar womban, pregnant with change, shape-shifter!

Now She's married to the Sun.

He comes to Her, faithful, each day at dusk,

sometimes clouded, sometimes still blazing light!

                               4

As I wash my hands I know

that we must cleanse the world to heal ourselves,

that we must cleanse ourselves to heal the world,

that we are unclean while the earth suffers.

We are admonished: it is not enough

to wash our hands of our responsibility.

© Tamara Rasmussen 2018