According to Lithuanian folklore, Jurate (Yoo-rah’-tay) was a goddess who lived in a palace of amber under the Baltic Sea. She fell in love with Kastytis, a fisherman, and brought him to her palace to live. They were very happy until the god of thunder, Perkunas, outraged at the idea of a goddess loving a mere mortal, destroyed her palace. Pieces of her palace, along with her tears, in the form of amber, still wash up on the shores of the Baltic Sea.

Jurate moans amid her amber—

little drops of unreasoning resin

petrified parables

borne on white waves to the

white sands beyond.

Primeval joy, fossilized,

gone with her palace of

gleaming moments, shattered

in a sea of tears.

She keens

for splintered dreams

tender mortality—his broken body

white upon the white sands

swathed in amber.

She staggers with the cost.

For a woman, to love

with abandon is to weep,

remain untamed.

She answers the bitter world

with beauty.

___

CAROL CASEY lives in Blyth, Ontario with her husband, hundreds of books, and a large garden. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Prairie Journal, antilang, Dust Poetry Magazine, Santa Fe Literary Review, Sublunary Review, Blue Unicorn, Popshot Quarterly and others, including a number of anthologies, such as, Byline Legacies (Cardigan Press) and Oxygen, Parables of the Pandemic (River Paw Press). Facebook: @carol.casey.7967; Twitter: @ccasey_carol; Webpage: https://learnforlifepotential.com/home-2/poetry/