Buy the book
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.
This blog is the second of a series of poem blogs that grapple with the symbols and images of the heroic masculine’s surrender to the love of the feminine as the glutinum mundi (glue of the world). It is my hope that this series will inspire you to find your own balancing relationship with the masculine and feminine archetypes in your life.
The poem series is 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.”
Play “His Thirst” Poem
Poem # 2: Catch the Bride’s Bouquet Series
Thirst
It was his story that touched Her.
Her heart knew his thirstiness,
knew how he’d become a killer,
quenching his thirst with anyone’s blood.
She knew his searing thirst was born
from a poverty of Love’s blood.
His anguish threw him onto the Planctae[1],[2],
clashing rocks in a violent and vicious sea.
There, despair of ever quenching his thirst
Was displayed on roiling waters,
frothing with his own blood, shattered bones
and entrails crushed by unforgiveness.
There, she found him,
and Her Love re-membered his body,
and quenched his thirst,
so that he became whole again.
© Geraldine Matus, 10/2022 revision
[1] Planctae /ˈplæŋktiː/ (Greek: Πλαγκταὶ, Planktai, ‘wanderers’, ‘wandering rocks’, ‘clashing rocks’ ) were a group of rocks, between which the sea was mercilessly violent. In Greek mythology, only the hero Jason was able to successfully navigate his ship through the rocks by the divine intervention and love of the goddesses Hera, Thetis, and the Nereids. Jason chose to brave the Planctae instead of facing the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis. See also ‘symplegedes’ in Homer’s Odyssey.
[2] Image from https://pxhere.com/en/photo/592335. Accessed October 01, 2022