A Pair of Poems, Volume 1

"The Ceaseless Dance" and "Can You Let Me In?"

The Ceaseless Dance

by Deer Ryder

“Dejanira” by Gustave Moreau, via Wikimedia Commons

Some great lung outside me breathes.

I wake through a whispering threshold.

Three knocks.

One step.

Yes, I am filled.

Yes, I am possessed . . .



Dance the ceaseless dance the ceaseless dance,

Abandon all Knowing as a fallen dress,

Howl moon-shaped invocations

While four-leggeds strum

North, South, East, and West. 



A robe of trembling roots,

A fragrant crown wilts to bow,

Hooded Night eats the trees

Devouring devouring

The Sun King’s territory.



Nine cycles walk the Earth–

Listen, cries of death,

Listen, cries of birth,

Proto-language feeds the womb,

While primal patterns weave cocoons.



Dance the ceaseless dance the ceaseless dance.



Rain hooves ride in ritual beat,

Blossoming beauty from soil’s slumber–

Naked in color,

A wild woman grows from hunger

Singing the blood-songs of life,

Scratching sound to shadow,

Drumming dark to light.



Soon, a honey-soaked tongue invites Her

To the painted cave of his embrace,

And on her back, a holy moan escapes,

Galloping, galloping

Where he can’t give chase.



Into the grove the Maiden goes,

To give what gift inside her grows,

Into the ancient midwife’s hands,

Then bleeds all back into the land.



One dies

One born

All rejoice

All mourn



(Dance the ceaseless dance the ceaseless dance.)

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Can You Let Me In?

by Deer Ryder

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“Caress” Painting by Robert Duxbury

May I earn entrance

To the soft parts

Of your secret heart.

And there, give care.

Gently pluck the weeds,

Gnarled and overgrown–

For even your own hand

Was too tender a touch here.



And if your true earth

Quivers beneath

My warm gaze;

If my scarred hands

Slide beneath your soil,

Never-tilled,

To separate the

Blood-thorned gate

Of your becoming,

Will you let an ancient sound escape

From that deep place

Never heard, but longed to sing?



With quiet animal tongue

Can I plant this whisper within

That fresh hollow of you:



“Can you let me in?”



Who am I to be let in?

What would it cost you

To cast me out now

Into the fearing cold

Of a god barren of

Your true becoming?



Am I not also an instrument

Of that music who loves you,

Who made you,

Now knocking on your secret door

With patient hunger,

Seeking your ripe undoing?



So I ask you . . .

Though it may cost you everything–

“Can you let me in?”



Though it may take a thousand breaths to forget,

“Can you let me in?”