About two weeks ago, around the time of the New Moon in Leo, a poem came out of me in response to an amazing poem by January Gill O’Neil, “Woman Swallowed by Python in her Cornfield.”
January’s poem is intense and beautiful — I originally read it in an Instagram post of hers (it’s officially published in Issue Ten of the Bennington Review) — and it must have been the fact that I was deep in reflections at the time on the meanings of Leo in the Zodiac, that the next day, this poem came pouring out of me, following the original form of “Woman Swallowed…”
“The Lion’s Gift” almost scared me at first. Where did this come from?! It’s as if I had channeled it, that my pen was just moving on its own along the lines of my notebook. I practically jumped back in surprise.
True to that (terrifying) vulnerability at the core of Leo energy at its best, it has taken these two weeks of my letting it sit, occasionally re-reading and tweaking a phrase, switching out a word, reading it aloud and letting the ring of the thing vibrate… Until today, on the eve of the Full Moon, that I finally feel ready to share.
So with that Leo lion’s roar, here ’tis:
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