Participants walk the 14 miles
.... from Athens to Eleusis,
....... enter the sacred grounds.
Owls wake in the trees,
swallows twitch and settle.
The two mothers start up:
Gaia, wouldn't she like to draw me
to her lap where Hades lives,
rotting and steaming?
Demeter pulls me to light by her
pacing and pacing.
I hold up my torch, my heart,
for my dark heart to see.
........ "Plait my hair,"
Heaera asked the day I left,
needing the hard-easy-easy
ritual pull of my fingers,
our ritual. Then she was
out the door with her friends--
my raw heart, pulled to light
twelve years ago by the midwife.
There was I, trying to
weave myself quickly into the gaps
of her laughter.
All night I sing and dance
like a child with the mystai
before the gap-toothed
mouth of Hades' shrine.
I try to tell myself
it's nothing to be afraid of, only
one of my mothers,
waiting--the mouth that takes us all
in, exhausted, torches doused.