poem - To an Unknown Goddess

I wrote this poem over a year ago, realizing that the dangled reconciliations of a fallen relationship were merely attempts to get me to pledge additional financial support. It draws its essence from the sermon preached by St. Paul in which he spoke of seeing a statue erected "to an unknown god" by cautious polytheists who thought they might have missed someone...

I have, in time, learned that much of what I write is not to Ann or Lauri or Alisha, but to a deified, rarefied abstraction of womanhood. One that, while some have lived up to parts of, no one will live up to the all (although, if anyone wants to try, I reserve the right to be delighted to be proven wrong...)

to an unknown goddess

I will start spinning your veil, today,
even though we are probably yet unmet.

I will catch moments, like snowflakes that fall,
to remember them to you someday when we speak.

I will not offer to show you the scars
but speak only of the healing and hope.

I will prepare you a place to lay down
near the fire, near the window, in my heart.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved. wrongs to be ignored and forgiven.

I remain the romantique, the quixotic fool who firmly believes that love is possible, if not inevitable.

I've had moments of it. Nancy, once we had worked out out differences, but before I screwed things up. Jan, for all too short a season...largely my fault. The Panther? No. Shadows and incense. Brigit? I like to think so, maybe she can answer better than I. The Mad Gypsy? I would have said yes, once, but now am uncertain. Ann? It would be easier to forgive her trespasses if I thought not, and I am into forgiving people, not wishing that baggage. So I will consider what we had to be a ruse on her part so that, in the end, betrayal is not so much a colour of the palette she is painted in.

So, what is to be made of what is observed from a safe temporal distance? I wish I knew. Right now I am emotionally withdrawn. Capable fo touching those emotions within me, but not able to fully embrace them. There is too much pain in them, and though I have been healing at a good clip from my estrangement from some whom I have cherished, both lovers and family, I am far from yet myself.

Perhaps in this time of catharsis I will find a cure for my conditions. My willingness to allow myself to be reshaped so readily. I have seen in myself a tendency to do what I think is necessary to save a relartionship, even if I know it to be wrong. I have been asked so many times to lie for or about another's failings, taking them on myself, that I have been accused of showing a martyr complex. Actually, I think it has been more of a chameleon's disease.

I've had to live so many lies just to get through the day with past liaisons, is it any wonder that the rainbow became shuffled and confused? I sought out the Quaker faith because of their demand of truth, and found it placed me in precarous position with so many people in my life. How easily people, even some who have damned me for deception, ask me to lie for them, to cover for them, to help them maintain their facades and their deceits.

I have earned better treatment than that. Perhaps not from God, who is perfect, but certainly from the people whose asses I have hauled out of hell everytime they had the whim to do something stupid. Superman (another of my complexes?) is tried of saving the Lois of the week after she wanders into the alien hideout.

I have a friend, Thomas, who has been writing me massive letters explaining his view of my "probelm with women". He believes that my problem is I see women as good, divine and wondrous creatures, superior to men and worthy of respect...when in truth they are deceitful, petty tyrants. I don't embrace his worldview, which has undoubtably been shaped by his own discourse with women, but I understand it. If I had to base my worldview purely on the experiences I have been handed, I would have to concede much of his point.

But I don't...and I won't. So, to any out there who have taken the opportunity to, purposefully or inadvertently, bring me hurt or harm, or put me in the impossible situation of having to be your Wormtongue, I'm going to do two things.

1) I am going to promise to try harder to do better and
2) I am going to forgive you.

As of this moment, all past grievances are settled. Pick up your beds and walk. The other way, please. Forgiving is one thing - trusting again...not so much,