Miracle Metaphor

Okay, I've been stumbling around this same thing from several different directions for more than a month, but I have more I want to write out and commit to (virtual) memory. My gender poem as it stands now:
__________

Virgo

her hands are cold and sore

this is a weak metaphor
but she doesn't have much use for beauty
small hands, soft and round
make small miracles, milk with honey
turn back, water that had been wine
they aren't mine, but will be

temperance
is always drawn a woman

but daddy, i'm missing you
couldn't give me your time
couldn't give me a y, but i
don't know what to do
in a woman's skin

but miss you
and wish for a man
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Okay, so who and what is this? Virgo is the virgin, but she's also the eternal mother. Her Sumerian name was something to do with some fertility goddess or another, and that makes sense with her being all about practicality and caretaking and abundance, but after the Romans got ahold of her she somehow turned back into a virgin. Stupid Romans. When you make your symbols contradict basic biology they can't and won't stand the test of time. Really, who takes Zeus seriously anymore? The occasional inversion I can handle, and paradox is great, but a god who's petty and insecure as the worst man I've ever met is no kind of god. (Maybe Zeus can be my symbol for Ben? Abstraction helps me deal and work my way back to a place of contentment and compassion, so this needs further consideration.) But the Romans screwed Hestia over something fierce. She was flame and security and a safe place to rest, a nice union of what I usually perceive as earth and fire, but they wrapped her up in shame for female sexuality, and now she's missing her flame. Her hands have gotten cold. I resented the hell out of my mom for what I perceived as her promiscuity and the way it destroyed my nice, safe family, but if I'm honest with myself I know that's not the whole story. She was Mother to me, but she was just a woman to her, and she was clumsily stumbling toward happiness like all the rest of us. Unfortunately for all of us, she had two young children she kept tripping over along the way.

So, Virgo. My mom is a virgo, incidentally, and as far as I recall I don't have a single planet in my whole chart that's in virgo or any other earth sign for that matter. But it's just a metaphor, not divination, so that part can actually be kinda useful. Those particular hands will never be mine; I've got two of my own and I need to learn to use them. (And, really, you should see them fly across this keyboard right now. Let it never be said that in all my dreaminess I haven't learned to do at least a couple things with dexterity and grace.) But we learn by modeling, and I've tried to be my mother since I was an infant because that's just what children do.

It was a revelation to begin to see temperance as one of my potential strengths instead of a stumbling block and a weakness. As an adolescent I had a tendency to overindulge in just about anything I didn't set up as totally taboo, but I was an adolescent. That's what adolescence is about. The fact that I have a tendency to drink just a bit more often than I should, but only a bit and very rarely more in one sitting than is wise, is a testament to the fact that I am growing up, if a bit more slowly than I had expected of myself. I'm learning to do things in moderation, to balance head and heart, to keep one foot on the ground and one in the moving stream, remember to carry around a pitcher of water so I can nourish myself in lean times. Oh, I never posted that desert piece here. It's not so good, but it relates to the water bearer/water and emotions as nourishment theme.
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desert blues

wasting through dry desert days
aching for somethin green
coyote lurking, showin his ribs,
fear and hunger makin him mean,
and the sand in his eyes
sun on his neck
dust in the air

haven't heard the rain all year

the desert is makin me lean, makin me lean
got me missin things i aint even seen
waves on the shore, wet sand in my toes
green trees and forest, lord only knows
how this desert is makin me lean

yucca's got roots go a mile deep
'cause it knows the sand keeps shifting
and time can break any hard dry stone
does me no good, i keep on drifting
with this sand in my eyes
sun on my neck
dust in my hair

haven't heard the rain all year

and the desert is makin me lean, makin me lean
got me missin things i aint even seen
waves on the shore, wet sand in my toes
green trees and forest, lord only knows
how this desert is makin me lean
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Silly and sentimental, but not a bad first draft expression of this idea. I think it might do me good to work through the nourishment aspect of each of the elements. I've noticed today I've been cooking and eating, writing and reading my own words, and I feel very pleasantly full in a couple different ways. (For anyone who didn't catch that one: words, intellect, and communication get filed under air.)

Back to Virgo: Temperance is an excellent symbol of self-actualized, balanced femininity, and it would be helpful for me to learn to play nicely with her. David helped with that, good little water-bearer he is, always wrapping his emotions up in something seemingly cognitive and unrelated, but soothing all the same. That suits Jacob pretty well too, now that I think about it, though his wrappers tend to be a bit more visual or tactile and less talky. *smirk* Capricorn, fish that insists on pretending it's a mountain goat. It's a restrictive lens, but it sure is working at the moment.

But we move away from temperance pretty quickly, because even thought it's complex and multifaceted, I haven't managed to internalize much of it yet. We still haven't gotten to first or even second person, because to do that I've always had to invoke something masculine. And what's everyone's favorite masculine archetype? Daddy's home! Do we squeal and rush into his arms or hide in our rooms because he doles out the real punishments? Oh, you know better than to fall for that false dichotomy; it's both at once, of course, but on top of that he's not actually here. He didn't give me his y chromosome, or an explanation for his absence, or even enough closeness to ever really feel comfortable calling anyone Daddy, just Father (much to his consternation) and, much later, Dad. And what is female without male? You can't have a continuum with just a single point, and I like dichotomies, like moving back and forth across a spectrum and reveling in the rainbow between.

Why, hello there Iris. You'd make a pretty good Temperance yourself, with those wings and the water pitcher, and who needs to know it's Styx water and not something a little softer. Talked to your sisters lately? Poor harpies got a bad rap, getting all mixed up with the sirens, although they haven't been treated all that fairly themselves. Fierce women aren't well liked, whether their fierceness is couched in flame or wind. But we like them well enough when they're all pretty and colorful. You keep on keepin on, Iris, but I gotta admit I still resent you just a hair. What happens when you grow up and those colors fade?