​Any fool can get into an ocean   
But it takes a Goddess   
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming   
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
    water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

    - Jack Spicer

Once it was in my dreams, a place that could home angels.
Their spirits and beauty captured in a moment, so pure and white.
A building, surrounded by draping plants and rolling slopes,
covered by small olive trees and lavender bushes.
A building stretched, touching the sky, not reaching the clouds,
yet they leaned over, rolling down the slopes
enveloping the worshipped state of mind.
Drinking its sweet milk, admiring its white columns,
watching the love angels dance,
while bathing in the sun's gaze.

In my dreams I am always taken back to a place like this,
my hopes end here; peace, love and hope fill my heart.

I am the clouds, I watch and admire, I see the angels,
I see the rolling slopes covered in fragrant flowers,
I run down the hill,
I watch the people living simple colorful lives.
Every upcoming step is a mystery,
they do not seek to satisfy their needs by traveling to achieve it somewhere else
but mold what they have, carving their lives out in the hills surrounding them.

Feeling the safety of the tall revered temple that stands on the hill,
hold them, embracing them,
filling the empty holes they once felt inside when they questioned the great meanings.
Their loved ones living close, down the street
in that slender Italian stone house they spoke their first words in.
In their arms the light of their life gurgles,
​a halved toothed mouth smiling up at their gleaming faces.
This bundle of joy,
part of a new generation of beautiful souls.

As you walk through the stony streets, towards the mountain top
the smell of cigarette and coffee dwindles,
pushed away by the vibrant notes of geranium and lavender.

These paths hold generations of memories, and memories yet to come.
Some day when I return, I'll walk these streets
​listening to the stories held by the rocks,
their emotions, the happy and melancholy,

Maybe one day it will no longer be a dream.

- Amelie Locke, January 2019