Lost Women
by Sue Repko
We get to Serpent's Mound as the sun is going down and the park is closing, and we fall out of the mini-van, my passengers, these pilgrims, these drunk and high Lost Women, deliberately lost, fervent believers in the art of getting lost, these poets and painters, who were never Girl Scouts, never learned how to use a compass, only how to start a fire and watch it burn burn burn.
The parking lot is empty, there's no guard to take our money, and we skip run fly like butterflies to the path that will take us to the mound, this sacred piece of land perched over the Ohio Brush Creek. When we round the bend, there she is — Dina — our lifeblood, prostrate at the coil of the serpent — Dina — motherless fatherless timeless daughter, lover, friend. There are embraces all around among these seekers, whose entwining began at artists' colonies, writers' retreats, and online through friends of friends of friends and spilled over to beaches, mountains, airports, motels, hotels, city streets, and coffeehouses, wherever the words and images — the Connections — could be made and sustained in the real world, the world we see, hear, touch, smell and taste, the world we take in and spit out.
We all join hands, except for mystic mysterious unfathomable Dina, who leads our procession along the mound, once, twice, three times around the coil and then sheds her clothing with each in and out of the Serpent's length — 1,300 feet, breaths, deaths, re-births — until she is at the open mouth and dances to the center of a raised oval there and raises her arms to the sky. Devour me.
In the gathering dark, Carla recites her poem, "Meow."
"I saw the best minds of my gender destroyed by material madness, starving hysterical naked, hauling their Hummers, dragging their children through the suburban streets, Wisteria Lanes, looking for..."
We huddle closer, shout "Amen" and "Go, go go," clamoring to keep guilt at bay for we have temporarily abandoned our children — some less temporarily than others — our poor lost wealthy children, who want for everything, cocooned in hi-tech homes, incapable of wonder — the wonder we seek on the road and in our minds, on the page and on the canvas.
When Carla is done, Dina retraces her steps, gathering her clothes while the rest of us make our way to the observation tower to ascend, to see the Serpent in its context, to wrest from her that which we have not yet received. But we're stopped by a man in uniform, Roger, who says, "The park is closed, girls," inching too close, a worm intoxicated by the perfume of drunk and high Lost Girls.
I take over for the absent Dina and say, "Now listen here, mister. First off, we're women, and second, we're on a field trip, and fourth, this is our book group and, for one thing, we've driven all this way, some of us from as far off as — " etc., etc., a drunken braid of truth and lies cut off by the sweetest song a bird has ever sung:
"I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things that a woman ain't supposed to see. I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me."
We all look heavenward, and starlight, star bright, first star we see tonight is Dina, topless, hanging over the side of the tower, holding on with one hand. We cheer, but Roger lurches toward the metal stairway, Dina's escape route. We can't leave her defenseless up there, so we — all six of us — tackle Roger and pin him there while Dina finishes and hurries down. As she fishes the keys from my pocket, Roger stops kicking, like maybe he's not so opposed to his predicament and — perhaps — the way he and Carla, who's straddled his mid-section, are moving in a slowly emerging, dewy syncopation.
There's the horn, my cue to pry off his shoes and hurl them into the underbrush.
And the mini-van slithers into the raging black of Highway 73, wending a path to the stars, Cincinnati city lights, while roadside crickets whisper devour me, devour me.