Ouroboros

By Vanessa Rowan Whitfield

 

I am.
I was.
I eat.

Unending layers,
the shedding of skin.

 

Devouring the self
again and again.

 

The jaw, an opened womb,
swallowing the end of scales.

 

Life, death and rebirth
without fail.

 

A circle weaving
through the universal sound.

Like a huge python
winding round and round.

 

World serpent,
forever embossed in space.

A hungry ghost
preparing for another taste.

 

Unending infinity,
the legless body shifts into lemniscate.

Mouth to tail, Yoni to Lingam,
a galactic figure eight

 

Vanessa Rowan Whitfield from US is an artist who works with a variety of media. She is a writer, a painter, a builder and a photographer. Whitfield owes much of her inspiration to the study of the natural world: a student of botany and biology, she styles her shots after nature photos from old scientific textbooks. She has also spent a great deal of time in nature itself, often embarking on excursions to the forested mountains of Pennsylvania, where many of her photos were captured.