The Queen of Wands

And I am the Queen of Wands.

Okay.

Here is how the world works:

It is all like nets.
ever golden, evergreen
the fruits fall
into hands-like-nets
the fish are hauled
into jaws-like-nets
the insects crawl
into claws-like-nets

and the thoughts fall
into minds-like-nets
it is all like nets.


On the other hand
a spider lives in the topmost branches of a pine,
her house a god's eye gleaming among the needles.
On hot days
she pays out her line and
twirls on down
to the surface of the lake or pond
to get a little drink of water
and to wash her face. She's such an
ordinary person.

The trees line the earth, great and small,
dogwood, plane, maple, rubber,
the elegant palm. The scrubby oak. The elm.
We're ordinary persons, too. We have our
long time friends across the distances,
our urgent messages and our differences.

And we have our parties.
We sugar up our petals just to get the probes of bees in us.
Most green ladies love everything the whipping wind can give them.
The avocado tree hung with her long green breasts,
she aches for fingers pulling at her;
the cherry, peach and nut trees with swollen balls
long for hands and mouths and claws;
the fig tree with her black jewels tucked between her
hand-shaped emerald leaves, is happily
fondled by the dancing birds, wild and raucous and drunk on
natural fig wine.

almost any summer morning
sun beams fall into my arms like lovers
giving me everything they've got
and they're so hot oh honey
I take it all

give it to me, baby
is my song

And I am the Queen of Wands.
The people honor me.
I am the torch they hold over their own heads
as they march like insects
by the billions
into the bloody modern world,
over discarded corpses of their ages past,
always holding me, aloft or in their arms,
a flame in the hand of the statue,
a bundle of coals
in their inflammatory doctrines, calling me
a chalice of fire,
essential light,
the Flama
and the stuff of which their new world will be made.

Sophia (Helen) they call me, enlightenment,
"God's light," wisdom, romance, beauty, being saved,
"Freedom" and the age of reason.
Progress, they call me, industrial revolution,
"People's rule," the future, the age of
electronics, of Aquarius, of the common man and woman,
evolution,
solar energy and self-reliance. Sexual self-expression.
Atomic fission, they call me, physics, relativity,
the laser computations in an endless sky of mind,
"science," they call me and also emotion, the aura of
telepathy and social responsibility, they call me
consciousness, "health," and love
they call me, bloom of Helen.
Blush upon her face, and grace.

And here I am a simple golden shower
and here I am only a spider
webbing their minds
with pictures, words, impulses
feelings translated into moral imperatives
and rules for living, like leaves
upon a tree, to catch the sun's attention.

The (the billions of people)
dance like Fairies on my smallest
twiggiest branches
whistling in each other's ears,
collecting and dispensing
seeds, wearing gold and
pretty clothing, worrying and not
really noticing all the other worlds
around them
how the sun center of my eye sews them
how the silver dream filaments direct them,
how their own thoughts connect them, how
the baton smacks their knees to make them
move their feet, that baton
at the end of the claw
of the Queen of Wands

And I am the tree
with candles
in its fingers
Menorah
Yule-flame
tree of life

the tree-shaped candle-holder
on the mantle
on the altar
on the flag of being.

And I am the Queen of Wands
who never went away
where would I go?

the flame is central
to any civilization
any household

any bag of bones. Any motley mote
you've got, of
little mustard seed can grow
into a yellow spicy flame
as you must know.

The sun is a weaver
and the rock earth her instrument.
Slender-fingered threads of light
and heat, dance like birds
shuttling.
Winds and the rain,
seeds and feet and feathers
knit the knot
making the great coat,
the coat of all colors.

The coat of all color;
over the whole earth, a caught fire
of living logs, brown and red,
tan and white, black and yellow
bobbing like a forest;
each a magic stick with
green flame at its tip

a green web
my leaves, my green filaments
like fingers spread
to catch the sun's attention, spread
to catch the sun like thread,
like sexual feelings, like
the gleam from an eye, or an idea.

and I am the Queen of Wands
I am who stands
who always will
and I am who remembers
the connections woven, little eggs
along the message line.

I remember giving dinosaurs
to the tall unfolded ferns to entertain them.
and immortality to the cockroach.
I remember the birthday of the first
flower, and the death of so many furry
animals and kinds of people, and a star
that fell. I remember a continent
of green
green wands of grass
burning into the knees of
buffalo queens, a landlocked
ocean of fire. Replaced by the
picket fence. Almost equally complex.
Sky scrapers like spikes.
But that's another song.
And I am the Queen of Wands
who burns, who glows, who webs
the message strands,
who stands, who always will.

--Judy Grahn, "The Queen of Wands"