SONOMA

In the Valley of the Moon, the mountains are women.
They lie serenely silent, protecting us with their gentle warmth.
Lion mothers with golden hips, breasts, shoulders, calves,
all coated with golden grass whose waves chart the wind’s caress.
Live oak trees line their folds with green-black softness.
.
Two human daughters of earth,
we walk an ancient trail through the valley,
remarking upon the manzanita,
inhaling a cool breeze that smells of the sea,
starting at a scurry in the brush.
City women, unaccustomed to striking fear
in small, wild creatures,
we laugh at ourselves and hurry on.
.
Abruptly, we come upon a high meadow,
a place we know in a moment is unlike any other.
Here there is no trail and, without a word,
we wade separate courses into the waist high grass.
The full moon rises behind a leonine shoulder,
a pearl medallion transmitting some message from the lavender sky.
The light goes silver and carries in stillness.
No breeze moves the earth’s fur, no clouds sail, no creatures amble.
We barely dare to breathe the deep, sweet scent of earth that enfolds us.
We are of the stillness, and the only movement is in the heavens
as the lioness releases the moon
to float into the now violet sky, towards the Pleiades.
A doe lifts her head above the grass and considers me,
holding her ground, deciding something of great importance to her,
to me.
The air moves again but it is no longer of the sea.
It is warm, warm as sighs, moving our hair, caressing our faces and arms.
It is of earth now, from the mother hills, benediction and embrace,
a gift spreading over the valley in widening waves, blessing the grass,
the doe, the moon, and all who have ever walked here.
.
Now we are of this Valley of the Moon, welcomed and nurtured
by the powers who rule here, who have ruled here always
and will remain forever, embedded in these lion-woman hills.