Page 168 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

me. They died, the gate opened, she saw her chance, stepping through and into a

child’s lament. She has been the unknown walking stick of my journey; she is the

singer, the finder of lost sorrows, the weaver of memory; she lives in the underside of
history’s tapestry, the underworld of our dreams.

I heard her once in the death lodge in the voices of rain and thunder. Lightning. I thought

I’d imagined it.

She is of my people. The Keening Woman. And I belong to her.

I walk up the hill in these small woods and I lay down tobacco, I lay down corn meal and

mead, I pour whiskey, and I sing a mourning song. And I ask her to teach me.

Nora Jamieson lives in Northwest Connecticut where she writes,
counsels women, and unsuccessfully tracks coyote. She is the

author of a book of short stories, Deranged, and lives with her
spouse Allan Johnson, their young and soulful dog Roxie and with

the sorrowful and joyful memory of four beloved goats and three
dogs. www.norajamieson.com