Unraveling Baba Yaga is a prose poem I wrote for my
mother…
The story of Baba Yaga is one of her favorites. It originated
in the Slavic countries of Europe, as a folktale. In the story, Baba Yaga is
hideous and old, living in her house in the woods, with only animal companions.
I re-imagined this story of spiritual transformation through
trial because I love the whole notion of shape-shifters and the merging of
nature and wildness with human life.
Baba Yaga is fierce and she is
terrible, but there is also a tenderness that ultimately emerges in her. It may
not happen until she dies, but how is that different from the transformation
that many people go through when facing illness, difficulties, or death?
She is in exile because she
revealed Shamanic secrets to a human child. As a result, she's sent out into
the woods (darkness) as her penance. Once there, she must serve and answer the
worst and most unruly children, aging rapidly under the weight of their
questions. However, each day she spends there, she repays her debt. She
literally uses up her life, answering questions that she has no power to
refuse.
To me, Baba Yaga represents
the most pure part of us, the part of us that is unchanging and unfettered by
anything that happens to us.
I think that's why my mother loves the story.
That's why I love it, too.
 |
| Baba Yaga's house |
Unraveling Baba Yaga
by Shavawn M. Berry
I
The crow medicine man raised one blue-black wing over the
bird’s small frame as she cowered on the floor. His voice erupted from his
beak, its pebbly sound showering around her.
You have betrayed the
order of the shape-shifters by revealing our powers to a human boy. You are therefore exiled to the birch
wood of the far north, with only animal guides as companions.
The fire hissed as the medicine man spit his spell into the
rising flames. One by one, moving around the circle in which she sat, tribal
witnesses turned their backs on her. Shunned, she was now dead to every breed
of bird. She would spend her life in human form, never again able to shape-shift
and take to the sky.
In your new life,
unruly, rotten and lost human children will find their way to you. They will puzzle
you with riddles you have no choice but to answer.
II
The human girl noticed her bruised arms and bare feet. A stranger here, she didn’t recognize this,
or any other, grove of trees. She awoke next to a rat terrier and a Manx. They
sat a few feet away, regarding her with suspicion.
In the distance, a log cabin stood – its tin roof reflecting
the moon.
She rose. Cat and dog followed suit. As she moved toward the
cabin, it suddenly ducked into the trees and hid. Barking, Dog made chase. House
ran deeper and deeper into the woods as the girl gave chase, too.
Cat followed for a while, then slowed, then stopped. She
washed her paws, sitting back, waiting patiently for an outcome.
House stood twenty yards or so away on two large chicken
legs. It occasionally scratched at the dirt, and circled as though settling
itself into a nest. Desperate for a place to call home, the girl spoke the
first words that came to her. In a soothing voice, she called Turn your back to the forest, your front to
me.
The small house shifted to the north and nestled itself on
the ground. A red door materialized, keyhole a mouth with sharp teeth. Without
hesitation, the girl crossed the threshold. Once inside, she felt right at
home.
III
A magic gate needs a password. What was hers?
The medicine man – yes, she remembered him now – had been
right. Snot-nosed brats, runaways, ruffians, and ragamuffins found their way to
her door. Their voices singed her ears with questions, riddles, and more questions. They sucked the marrow from her bones –
Early on she realized, for every kindness, every answer she
gave, she aged a whole year.
Now, no longer a girl, or even a maiden, her face showed every
tributary of middle age. Her hair hung in shanks around her face, peppered with
gray.
These brats stole my
life. They yanked my spirit loose of
its tether, left me nothing but a shell.
She was especially rough on boys; boys who thought they
could outwit her, or worse, make her love them. Poor fools. Tibia, fibula,
femur and patella formed pickets for her lovely white fence. Vacant skulls lined its edge, wind
combing their sockets.
IV.
Face scuffed up as a dried apple,
she drinks tea
made of blue roses
and for an hour –
maybe two – she’s young again.
V.
Barely breathing, this last dreadful child’s question upon
her:
How can I find my way home?
Her throat, raw with phlegm, percolates an answer:
Die―
VI.
Cat and dog wrap her in a shroud, dragging her corpse outside to a hastily arranged funeral pyre.
House dances a jig beside a weathered birch whose roots feather deep into the forest.
Cat lights kindling, bits of string and fluff, leftover candle nubs, and oil from the bedside lamp. The fire leaps to life. As the crone’s body sputters and starts to burn, an indigo bird emerges, eyes the color of polished rubies.
She whispers over a clamor of hissing and barking and flying fur:
In exile no more.
 |
| Photography by Lisa Saraswati Cawley |
Shavawn M. Berry: Her
work has appeared or is forthcoming in Olentangy Review, Black Fox Literary
Magazine, Rebelle Society, The Cancer Poetry Project 2, Kinema Poetics,
Kalliope, Poet Lore, Westview - A Journal of Western Oklahoma, Meridian
Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Concho River Review, North Atlantic Review,
Synapse, Living Buddhism, Blue Mountain Arts/SPS, and Poetry Seattle. Her
technique essay on the dramatic monologue/persona poem is featured in a poetry
database published in 2013 by Ebsco Publishing. In 1998, she received her MPW
in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles where she specialized in Creative Nonfiction and Memoir. Ms.
Berry teaches writing at Arizona State University where she is currently a 2013
Lincoln Ethics Teaching Fellow. A portfolio featuring a selection of her
essays, blog postings here and prose available here. Connect with her on Facebook here.
~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~
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