I’m sitting in a wide green maw
ringed with pointed piny teeth,
huge restless breaths chilling my face —
this creature has no warmth.

Birds squeak and chitter like cold machines.
Clouds pile and drift in a blank blue sky,
forming no pictures. A distant motor 
grinds along. This world holds no magic.

The year rolls onward to its end.
Nothing can save us from our doom,
cast aside by indifferent nature.
Why should it care? We’ve done no good.

Yet there, leaning against the slope,
five autumn trees lift flaming tongues
divided and come to rest as signs
above earth’s tilted countenance.

Radiance hides spikes of dark,
music played on a harp of bones.
Forms glow and dim as sky shapes pass,
witnesses to what does not change.

Martyrs facing their doom in the pit,
they laugh and raise a song of light.
Over them death has no power.
Why should I be afraid?
                        

from Sanskrit mātṛ', a measurer;
one who measures across or traverses; 
a knower, one who has true knowledge

She is a bridge, a green snake
turned to gold. She carries you
from shore to shore, measuring
distances between worlds.

She bears your weight, stretching across
the empty air with radical trust,
not knowing how this works, nor why
the span stays up. She did not build herself.

And yet she is the knowledge
buried in the earth, unseen
except by bodies filled with light.
She waits for the temple to rise.

She is sacrifice
and hope. She hopes that you
will reach your journey’s end, although
she cannot walk with you.

Yet legless she walks, eyeless sees, 
encompassing all in her great ring,
reflected in you as in the river
when rushing waters are stilled.