“Sophia Wisdom” by Lydia Ruyle

The other night
with the Moon’s light
veiled in her dark
monthly seclusion

the wilderness sky revealed
a dome of dazzling stars
so vast
I gasped with delight,
a familiar memory
of kinship.

Around the rim where sky touches earth,
in every direction,
lightning danced in soft spreads of light
messengers of potent possibility.

With Her dark spaciousness
this Star Mother
tells me that
She will hold my troubles.

“Offer it up,” She says,
just as my birth/earth Mother used to say
when my childhood sorrows felt too much to bear.

“Offer it up.”

In memory of my mother, Lena Pearl Moser, who left this world on March 26, 2014, and of my friend, Lydia Ruyle, who departed on March 26, 2016.