I wrote this last June and a conversation this morning on the wild woman reminded me of it…

The knocking has been there for months.  At first it was quiet, mistaken for air in the pipes or the cat in the next room. With the lapse of days it grew more insistent.

One night it is enough.  The knocking is by now a hard, heavy, heart-beat hammering and I need to find out why.  The house is empty; I am alone.  Fearful.  I drag the table across the floor, pull back the rug.  There is door in the floor, a cellar door, heavy, dark wood, old and marked.  The handle is rusted and it takes all my effort to twist it, to feel the latch shift underneath.  I pull it upwards and aside.

She is there.  Hands bruised and bleeding from her knocking. Eyes sharp with wildfire and lightning.  For a moment I am afraid.  Her hair is matted, her face dirty.  She climbs quickly up into the light, lithe and fluid like a grass snake, flowing into the waking world.

I stand back, cautious, unsure, her gaze pierces and disturbs, she sees through the shadow of flesh to soul’s truth and knows me.

She reaches out to me, pulls me in close and in this sudden embrace comes a flood-tide of memory, rushing, pouring through thought and into the marrow of my self.  A homecoming.