red clay is talking:
poems by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky

Praise for red clay is talking

The voice here is rich and musical. It balances the breadth of a woman's life on the turtle back, the bull's hips of myth. —Richard Silberg

Shifting, dappled light, interwoven with shadow. The colors of bright detail softened under moonglow. In Naomi Lowinsky's consistent search for the Mother, the meaning of the feminine, we meet the Goddess in her many guises. This is a poetry of quest, and the poet takes us through myriad ages and cultures. We partake with her in ecstasy and darkness, passion, epiphany and hunger, and our world is larger for it. —Diane di Prima

before

life after life
I stand by the road
and look for a home
                                Mirabai

she had been raised to sing
other people's songs
but in the third morning of the new time
with the wisteria blooming outside her
kitchen window
and the shadow of the earth
about to fall upon the moon
she looked at the sky
the comet had inhabited
saw four geese fly east

heard the telephone ringing
the man in her house running
up circular stairs
calling her name

and suddenly remembered
the lips of the one who had sworn her
to silence
in dark waters
        whispering—
                wait for me—
                        one morning when the children are gone
                                                                                    I'll call—
                       put on your brown sandals
                       wrap yourself up
                       in your tree of life shawl
                       come walk with me
                                              to devil mountain
                                              singing the song
                                              we were singing before you
                                                                             were born—