Strawberry Moon

excerpt of the essay,  “Strawberry Moon” taken from
the collection of unpublished essays in the book, For  
The Love of a Woman:13 Essays On The Full Moon©2013 stephanie pope, mythopoetry.com 

I have a little poem published in my first poetry book, Like A Woman Falling (©2004 Mythic Artist Press) called “Ode To Rose Annie.” It’s dedicated to my eldest daughter.

Rose Annie is a darling thing
born to me before the spring
now I can hear the robin sing
“Rose Annie, I love you”            -Ode To Rose Annie   p17


Annie is for the Raggedy Ann she carried around throughout her childhood years. She loved that doll so much that when it tattered and fell apart, she still carried around the arm with her everywhere she went. The arm was all that was eventually left of it…

I gave then to my daughter a second, larger, Raggedy Ann especially made for a much bigger little girl and another doll at the same time. The second doll was called Strawberry Shortcake. If you remember this doll like I do, you remember she has a sort of cream puff shaped pink bonnet. That is what the rose remembers in my ode. Love is a flower. It blossoms tender.

Coincidentally, that is the other name for the June full moon. Some call the June full moon a rose moon and some call it the strawberry moon. For me the June moon recalls both and holds close to me the green memory of my young motherhood.

The June full moon brings something of the rose to my strawberry memory and something in the memory to something ineffable that lingers just out of reach in the rose. It is something pink and lovely like a little girl born in the heart before the spring and ahead of the strawberry season.

Rose Annie then, is my metaphor for the chthonic, earth spirit who is the breath of life and the mother in the waters bringing life into renewal each spring. That means there is something of the earth spirit, something deeper and darker which reignites for me in the inwardness carried in memory. It reunites me to a half-hidden, felt-sense in an image reflecting itself throughout the in-visible sides as if eternally pregnant and radiantly fertile in the anima of a strawberry life.

I have a feeling I relate deeply to the line John Lennon writes,

“Let me take you down; I’m going to strawberry fields.” 

Maybe that is what my poet in the ode intuits; that the carrying ever inward of our images brings something of the downfended rose in the moon eternally to life.


excerpt of the essay,  “Strawberry Moon” taken from the collection of unpublished essays in For The Love of a Woman: 13 Essays On The Full Moon.