Divinity of Woman
Scroll
The Poem
Divinity of Woman
I was witnessing something.Just the specific quality of attention that arriveswhen something is more beautiful than you were prepared forand the preparation you didn’t do becomes the whole of what you feel.
She is made of the earth.The red canyon. The forest. The river trailing in the water —the boundary between the body and the world not a boundarybut an agreement made before either existed separately.
She was the landscape. The landscape was her.
The landscape was her
I was the one looking.This is what wanting feels like when it arrives as reverence —not the wanting that reaches, not the wanting that asks —the wanting that witnesses, that stands at the edge of the magicaland understands that the distance is not a problem to be solvedbut a condition to be inhabited.
The fantasy complete in itself.The wanting its own kind of having.
She rests in the water.Not waiting. Not for me.The mythic thing is never waiting —it exists entirely in itself, the earth and the body continuous,the water holding what it holdswithout asking what it means to hold it.
She rests in the water
I was witnessing.The magical thing about magic is that it doesn’t need you.It was there before you came. It will be there after.
The wanting is yours.The beauty belongs to itself.
And for the moment you stood there —
both of those things were true at the same time
and you were present for all of it
which is, it turns out,
the whole of what was being offered.