NaPoWriMo Day Two: Heather McVey – Astrology

Heather McVey invites you to look to the stars for today’s prompt. Whether you believe in astrology or not it could proved heavenly inspiration.

Heather writes: I’m an astrologer and singer-songwriter from Cambridge UK. Maybe I’m a poet too. Both music and astrology appear to be closely connected through universal languages of rhythms, cycles, geometry and archetypes. And both evoke poetry in me. Astrology has opened up a magical world of symbol and fluidity for me. I find the symbolic sky a treasure trove, an infinite source of storytelling. I began writing ‘astro-poetry’ very recently, and hope that you may like to tap into this profoundly rich source of inspiration also. 

If you’re not an astrologer, or don’t know the symbolic or mythological archetypes assigned to different planets and stars, you might still enjoy gazing at a birthchart, and letting the chart draw your eyes to areas of interest, muse over the symbols, and see what speaks through or to you. Perhaps you know bits and pieces of Greek or Roman mythology that might also inspire. 

You can cast your birthchart on a variety of different online websites such as astro.com or astro-seek.com. Or you can look up a celebrity’s birth chart via a search engine. You can let your eyes and senses wander over the symbols and see what they evoke. 

If this is not a method that works for you could simply look at the sky for direct experience. You can simply allow what comes. Or. You might think about the dance and cycles of the planets and stars, the motion and rotation. There is always a new piece of sky emerging, rising on the eastern horizon, planets rising and setting from our geo-centric perspective. You can think of the lunar cycle, it’s waxing and waning, increase, decrease, the dance of the Sun and Moon, the yin the yang, the mother and father, the conscious and unconscious. The symbolism is endless. Does a star or planet at the highest point in the sky tell a different story to a planet that has just risen, or is just about to set? I see the planets as archetypes, characters, parts of our own psyche, and symbols of the people and events in our lives. 

My poem is about a friend whom I love dearly. It is inspired by them and their birth chart, and is written and published with their knowledge and permission. 

Temples of You

Sky collapsed, inversion 
I straddle you where you rise 
we merge in liminal spaces 
where darkness threatens light 

I reach into your shadows, untethered 
ancestral shorelines rage 
cloaked lantern of nostalgia 
she wanes across the stage 

Maternal waves wash languished dreams 
hanging limp on grandma’s bones 
strewn polaroids, distorted 
by tears you’ve cried alone 

I dive a little deeper 
rest where benthos burrow low 
sublime rays pierce through sediment 
These depths I pray you’ll know 

For this is where you hold her 
most radiant jewel of all 
a Venusian realm of beauty 
beneath your ocean floor.

Heather McVey

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