We have probably already
had hundreds, thousands — oh,
more than words can tell,
than there are words —
more and more.
We have lived in the stars
and the rocks, as butterflies
and ants, galloping
over savannahs
on four legs,
wandering upright —
chanting, chanting,
bending under the sun,
crying and crying,
swishing our long skirts —
and flying through the air!
Oh you gods, ever beside me —
with this tongue, this wing, these
feet, this leaf — this light —
I praise every one.

[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.]