Aphrodite’s daughter,
priestess Sappho,
singer with lyre —

into whose ear whispered
lovely Erato
and holy Polymnia —

touching the foot
of the golden Goddess
turned into gold.

In Alexandria’s unquenchable flames
her songs rise
immortal.

[From poet Janine Canan have come the award-winning collections Messages from Amma: In the Language of the Heart and She Rises like the Sun: Invocations of the Goddess by Contemporary American Women Poets; translations of the French poet Francis Jammes and German-Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schueler; two illustrated storybooks, Journeys with Justineand Walk Now in Beauty: The Legend of Changing Woman; her collected essays,Goddesses Goddesses; and many books of poetry including Ardor: Poems of Life,Changing Woman, a Small Press Review selection, and Of Your Seed, recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Janine lives in California’s Valley of the Moon, where she is a practitioner of holistic psychiatry, graduate of New York University School of Medicine and Stanford cum laude, and a follower of the Indian saint and humanitarian Mata Amritanandamayi. Please visit her site  for more information.]