Little breezes dusk and shiver...

It is overcast and grey but the days are drawing out slowly. It's no longer late winter, but now early spring and the snowdrops begin to droop, cowed by the milder breezes. The garden sways to their songs.  Soon the yellow trumpets of the daffodils will sound through the forest, shining like thick rays of sunlight among the leaf litter...

Winds tug the branches.

Witches' naked fingers tap

Against the glass pane

Softly, from her slumber...

My forest is stirring.  Quietly, in the thin light, the trees and plants are remembering.  Soon they will shake out their new spring clothes, light and delicate. Birds move among them, heralding their return. Now, new blue faces greet me each day, among their snow-white cousins outside my door...

Slow, from darkened hold,

Reaching sunward, slim green arms.

Gentle Scilla wakes.

A torrent of words

Since doing a timely spring clean of hearth and home, I have found a few old projects... I find myself looking at them under the light of the new year - clear and revealing.  Some have resurfaced and leapt from their dusty files, clamouring to be given new life.  From the printed page, new spaces appear between old words, ready to be filled...

Fae-bright, these secret spaces

Call from the old hours

Giving pause, the unfilled moment.

In my ear, the infinite river - listen!

New tickles at the edge of inspiration.

Reach for the one precious drop

Thirst-quencher, dream-giver.

A first word.

Full Moon Blessings...

Tonight is the Wolf-Moon, so called by the native American peoples as they heard packs sing in the snow-bound January landscape.  Tonight, in our forest home, we watched the moon as it rose above the forest, huge and glowing in the darkening sky... 

"The gaze of the wolf reaches into our soul." ~Barry Lopez

Fat gilded coin, pirate's dubloon

Howl with the wild at this midnight Wolf-Moon.

Watch her rise fair, atop trees dim with night

Dance and rejoice in her pure, cleansing light

According to those same North American traditions, I am born with the wolf as my totem,  Pathfinder, wanderer, parent, lone wolf, packmate, warrior, coward, noble, shy, loyal...  

I have long been fascinated by wolves, as many are, so tonight I shall howl with my domestic wolves, sounding our call of the wild, Please join in, Howling for Justice  as the world's pack lift their voices against the slaughter of wolves in the Montana and Idaho hunts. Please read more about the vigil here.

The Skald's Daughter

I have found my thoughts turning to poetic forms more recently as I continue with my Norse-inspired literature.  The Poetic Eddas are a constant source of wonderment and confusion for me and so I have begun to study the anonymously authored Fornyrðislag of Eddaic poetry. I love this idea, that the Edda is the property of all storytellers and poets to be peformed and enjoyed without censure or boundaries. This was in contrast to Dróttkvæði, the bread and butter of the Old Norse courtly bard, the Skald. Skalds sang of their liege Lord's prowess and valour, the Eddas were the stuff of the Ancients, with their origins lost to time... Just as the daughter is a step removed from her Sire, so is the Poetic Edda a separate entity to the poetry of the Skaldic domain.

This is my first foray into Poetic Edda-form and an overture to producing a true rendering of things mythological...

Hear me sing of the ages

Of times well past

And those that shall come.

These songs from the void.

I give Time a voice

And Space, a home.

Stories of the ancestors

Shall bring them back

A way of ancient words

Across the years;

Through the night

Into home and hearth

Death, birth and the gods

All that lies between

Shall be revealed through me

The whispers I hear

Thin as cobwebs

A thousand times as strong

Pour the mead, a golden sea

See it flow, like these words

That spill from my lips

Travelling across the fires

Infinite as the universe

Open your mind's eye...

Pictures from the past

I will share with you

Sent by the Old Ones!

A vision, a gift.

A warning, a dream

Of forever.

Born in the dust of the world

Raised up by sun

To dance with the moon;

Blessed by the stars.

Child, Woman, Crone.

I open the crane skin bag....

Myrkr

To celebrate the new addition to our canine family, Kira (Gaelic: 'Dark Lady'), here is a Haiku inspired by her sweet glance...

Soft eyes gently shine

Gazing, dark as midnight.

A little shadow

The Stolen Afternoon

At the beginning of the week, I had the great fortune to visit Doon Hill, with two fae-friends.  The day dawned bright and full of sunbeams and hope for a great day. The fae did not disappoint us.

Here, in my homage to W.B. Yeats' evocative poem, is what I hope, a true rendering of our experiences there - if only we could have stayed...

Where dwells the sacred pine tree

Near Aberfoyle’s auld Kirk

There rises up our Dun Sidhe,

Amid green shadows mirk

Of rowan, holly, ash.

There they walked upon the rath

Filled with hope that

They might soon behold our Seelie Court.

Come away, O mortal folk!

Here beneath the verdant oak

With your fellows, hand in hand

For we have an open portal, unto our summer land.

Where the spear-beam sunlight glistens

Along lofty wishes

We flitter as we listen

Bestowing our kisses

Upon those human brows upturn’d

In faces, smiling, glances

Here and there they seek,

To follow gauzy fleet wings

That are like to make their hearts sing

And right chirksome in its beat.

Come away, O mortal folk!

Here beneath the verdant oak

With your fellows, hand in hand

For we have an open portal, unto our summer land.

Where moss-clad stones lie gird around

By split-trunk ancient beth

With softest hushing sound

Breathe sweet nature’s breath

And with their humble offering

A commonwealth is wrought

For a span of their time

The world means nought

A balm to suffering

On Doon Hill sublime

Come away, O mortal folk!

Here beneath the verdant oak

With your fellows, hand in hand

For we have an open portal, unto our summer land.

Away with us they’re coming,

The cheerful Three

Through glades with fat bees humming

Lifted are their hearts, and free

With gladsome shout and joyous laugh

They step into our realm

Full here to dwell, their world flies past

And time does overwhelm.

And so remain these blessed folk!

Here beneath the verdant oak

With our fellows, hand in hand

For we had an open portal, into our summer land.

Flowers and Showers

A garden opening in the verdant Borders provided an opportunity for today's Haiku. Even though the countryside was dripping with the heavy rain that fell, it made the colours of the flowers and plants even more intense, magnified by the drops...

Rain mists slowly drift 

Across the green valley,

Bright flowers grow here.

Sif Dreaming

Sif, the second wife of Thor, is the lady with the corn-gold hair. Some sources state that she has the gift of prophecy, although this is not mentioned in the Eddas. 

I find the sonnet both challenging and rewarding for its structural limitations, but found it fit the melding of ancient and classical modes of poetic delivery. Though this is a stylistic deviation of this curtal sonnet from the traditional English form, it'll suffice for now - I will revisit it in time...

Continuing my reworking of Norse myth, I offer one of Sif's prophecies. 

The Götterdämmerung

Thrice the white Shroud falls, Moon and Sun are dimm'd,

O’er wights that flee before dark blades of kin.

Bright toothed, the horn’s song answers cry and string

When Fen-dweller the fetter’d link doth break

The earth, as sea to Coils unravelling.

And Great vessels set to grim purpose, sail,

To bring all death to ride the Battle’s Shake

Who herald this Gold-glimps’d Twilight fate.

With Fire and Ice darts Shifting treachery;

Then Bravery shall fall and so shall we.

17/05/02

When I was traveling through Thailand I kept a journal of thoughts, musings and observations. As I ate my evening meals, my words would invariably turn more brief and verse would appear.  The poems are untitled and correspond to the dates in my journal.  On the 17th May I watched the sunset off the coast of Ao Nang, the clouds were high, thin shreds of Cirrus, turning gold in the evening sky. As the winds blew them out to sea, into the darkening horizon, they became bent out of shape and my thoughts turned to Ouroboros as their ragged ends seemed to writhe in on themselves...
For Angela,  who loves dragons..

Dragon eats its tail,
Devours the whole world
And creates nothing
Nothing is everything
Destruction is creation
Of the Void
Which nothing can fill
Nothing inside nothing
Everything inside the dragon.