Sheela at Kilpeck

by Cat Lupton

You’re high above me, on the squat red church wall
You’re behind me, my mother’s outstretched vagina
You’re under me, the waiting Earth
As you hold out before me, bunched in your fists,
The womb’s door, by which I will leave
The way I came in
Naked, empty-handed, only air bunched in
My ancient baby fists.

And you look funny, your big yoni eyes
Staring innocent at me as you expose
The great cosmic joke for all to see
And you look primitive, pared down to a wishbone
A heart, a face, two hands and a cunt
And you look beyond caring, who cares
How they see you, hag Goddess exhibiting
a) What’s between your legs and
b) That there’s no way around it

This is how we do birth on this Earth, this is how
We do death – that you don’t get one
Without the other
And that between the one and the other
There are many deaths, many births
Each a journey, a travail, an initiation
In the raw, wild, unspeakable down there
This hole, this holy place,
Where we enter between your labia
Get sucked and squeezed and shafted
Where the passage feels tight, hot, wet, dark,
Airless

And we have no control over how we got in there
Nor how we are going to get out of there
If we will live to see the light at the end
Or if we are capable of the necessary surrender
Until we do surrender, and are slid out
All juicy new and shining, something
Changed in our energy shape
One skin closer to our soul
Closer to the secret of your red flesh church

Whisper it:

When we are deep inside you, you are
The fierce crone lover who no longer
Keeps any of her inhibitions, any of her mouths closed
Yet you hold us so tenderly, blanket soft
Gentle as a mother holding her little one –
Which of course we are to you.

Sheela na gig, dancing your jig,
We open our legs wide for you
For this is life, this is what it is
To live.

7 April 2022