This poem is the third in a series of poem blogs titled Catch the Bride’s Bouquet in reference to Leonard Cohen’s song The Gypsy’s Wife (Cohen 2001). Gypsy’s husband is looking for her and when he sees her surrenders to her.  Ah the silver knives are flashing in the tired old cafe / A ghost climbs on the table in a bridal negligee /She says, “My body is the light, my body is the way” / I raise my arm against it all and I catch the bride’s bouquet.”

In my book, The World’s Geography of Love, I detail what happens when we surrender our living to the influence of the feminine archetypal energies. Such a surrender balances the overdriven heroic masculine archetype that rules us and our world culture.

When the masculine archetype has too much power, is too narcissistic, and is too engaged with rationality and materialism it abandons and denigrates the feminine archetype and misrepresents its power, vitality, and necessity for life. We see evidence of this in incidences of misogyny, hatred, and intolerance of the ‘other’, and exploitation of the natural world.

This poem exam the destructiveness of unmediated power. Too much sun energy blinds us to the harmonizing influence of the feminine. Too much sun keeps the feminine in in the shadows of living.

This poem arrived fully formed in a dream, responding to my ongoing inquiry into the nature of love and power.