As earth warms
and her ice fields melt
and the skeletal bones of her crust shift
and her hot core cooks up something new,
human structures collapse
along with the Siberian permafrost.
Being here is like being born:
everything is dark and tumultuous
and you don’t know where you’re headed
and you didn’t ask for this
but this, whatever it is, is already happening
and it’s too late to bail out now.
Call the midwife,
Call the female shaman,
Call 911 Multiverse,
We have to learn to let go.
‒ Harriet Ann Ellenberger
3 July 2020
Thanks to Jack Dempsey for sending me the photo, which he describes as “a little clay bowl crafted in post-Minoan Crete: likely, a midwife holding and comforting a woman giving water-birth” (from the cave-shrine of Eileithyia, goddess-patron of mothers, at Inatos, near Tsoutsouros, Crete, dated 9th˗6th cent. BCE). His main website on Minoan Crete is Ancientlights.org.
“Being Here Now” was first published in Return to Mago E-zine on 31 August 2020.