Goddess, I come to you my neck wreathed with rosebuds, my head filled with visions of infants, my palms open to your silver nails, my eyes open to your rays of illumination, my vagina & my womb gaping to be filled by your radiance. . . O goddess, I would be a worthy vessel. Impermanence- all is impermanence. The co*k rises to fall again; the woman fills only to empty in a convulsion that shakes the world; the poet grows to become a voice only to lose that voice when d**h takes her. A stroke cancels her upon the page- & yet I open her book & a chill wind blows from eternity. Goddess, I come to you wreathed in tears, in losses, in whistling winds. I wrap the witch's herbs around my neck to ward off the impermanence that is our common fate. The herbs dry & crumble, as my face grows the map of my anxieties, & my daughter leaps up like a vine twining around the trellis of impermanence. O goddess, teach me to praise loss, d**h & the pa**ing of all things- for from this flux I know your blessings flow.