Time passes...

...and I realise it's been a year since I last posted! Since then there has been an addition to our family in the guise of our very own pixie baby! Our days are precious and full of love.  She's a wee joy, full of smiles and so cuddlesome. I'd always imagined, but now I truly know what it is to live with my heart outside myself...

Our child, my soul soars

Wee hands, flawless pink curled shells

Bright light of our lives

Smailholm Dreams...

Rain mists soak the landscapes surrounding the tower house. I watch swallows dance through the fine droplets, searching nesting sites, chittering their hellos to me as I wait for the next visitor... I have walked, through the silent bovine faces, each day up the craigs; the faeryknowe sleeps beneath my gaze, beckoning the Rhymers' children to its shining lands beneath.  My realm is of stone and rock, sulphur-bright broom and snapping Saltire; alone for a time, until crunching pebbles announce interested minds seeking their own experience of this solid remnant of the Borders' pyking past...

Stark it stands, upright.

Scott's warden, atop its crag

Always watching...

"Everywhere peace, everywhere serenity..."

Soon I begin a new chapter, in quietude of soaring arch, knave and transept. My heritage work takes me new, old places... from now to then. Twisted faces look down in blessing and the ironclad heart of an ancient King of Alba sleeps in immortality beneath my feet.

"... and a marvellous freedom from the tumult of the world."

The silence of stone,

Softly yields the sacred tones.

Voices from the past.

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.

Song of the Sealmaid

My apologies, dear reader, for not posting in a very long time - the seasons shift, time passes and so too do my daily opportunities to post anything meaningful or worthwhile for your enjoyment.

However, suffice it to say I was extremely pleased to hear that my Flash Fiction piece 'Tideline'was chosen to win the MicroHorror.com Hallowe'en Short Story competition. You can read the piece here!

I have long been fascinated by the notion of shapeshifting, and particularly our own Scottish mer-folk, known as Selkies.  It was to these mysterious people that my mind travelled when I read the theme for the competition: water.  My great friend and artist, Jennie Cooper drew the most deeply evocative image of a Selkie I have yet seen and it was this image I had in my mind's eye for my sealmaid.

Bealtinne Eve by Jennie Cooper

So it was with a great sense of synchronicity that I have recently encountered this Icelandic folk tale about  a Selkie:

The Seal's Skin

There was once some man from Myrdalur in Eastern Iceland who went walking among the rocks by the sad one morning before anyone else was up. He came to the mouth of a cave and inside the cave he could hear merriment and dancing, but outside he saw a great many seal skins.  he took one skin with him and carried it home and locked it away in a chest. Later in the day he went back to the mouth of the cave: there was a young and lovely woman sitting there, and she was stark naked and weeping bitterly.  This was the seal whose skin it was and the man had taken. He gave the girl some clothes, comforted her and took her home with him. She grew very fond of him but did not get on so well with other people. Often she would sit alone and stare out to sea.

After some while the man married her and they got on well together and had several children. As for the skin, the man always kept it locked up in the chest and kept the key on him wherever he went. But after many years he went fishing one day and forgot it under his pillow at home. Other people say he went to church one Christmas wit the rest of the household but that his wife was ill and stayed at home; he had forgotten to take the key out of the pocket of his everyday clothes when he changed. Be that as it may, when he came home again, the chest was open ad both the wife and the skin were gone. She had taken the key and examined the chest and there she had found the skin; she had been unable to resist temptation but had said farewell to her children, put the skin on, and flung herself into the sea.

Before she woman flung herself into the sea, it is said she spoke these words:

"Woe is me, Ah! woe is me!

I have seven bairns on land

And seven in the sea"

It is said the man was broken hearted about this. Whenever he rowed out his fishing boat afterwards, a seal would often swim round and round his boat and it looked as if tears were running from its eyes.  From that time on, he had excellent luck in his fishing and valuable things were washed ashore on his beach. People often noticed that when the children he had by this woman went walking on the seashore, a seal would show itself near the edge of the water and keep level with them as they walked along the shore and would toss them jellyfish and pretty shells. But never did their mother come back to land again.

The origins of this sealwife folk tale goes back to the 1600s, though this version of the story was retold by the Rev. Skuli Gislason before his death in 1888.  Traditionally the belief held that seals, or Selkies (the Orkney term for seal) were descended from the drowned soldiers of Pharoah, who shed their skins at Midsummer or on the twelfth day of Christmas. So I find it fitting that I should leave you with this tale of denizens of the mysterious realm beneath the waves and wish you a blessed and beautiful Yule. May you cast off the sealskin of your old year, in the dark nights and chill winter days, to be reborn anew at the advent of the New Year, full of love and light.

Hail!

Winter has made its presence felt for the first time...

Heaven casts its pearls

Tiny, white and freezing cold

Impermanent spheres

Love in a time of sorrow...

It is a sad time in our forest home... our darling pup Kira has a heart condition, which means she'll not be with us for much longer.  But as I look into her languid eyes, filled with trust and gentleness, I know...

Love can never fade

It grows strong as time passes

Like an ancient tree

Joy!

What a glorious day in my forest! The weather has changes, bringing heat and light to the rainbow trees...

Warm winds wash my face

A late Indian Summer

Fleeting as it is...

Bright bounty

The winds of this late summer burst of warmth have scattered a million tiny leaves - Ashka also enjoys nature's colourful collage...

Rich autumn treasures

Flung like jewels across the yard

Citrines and rubies

Passerines Passing...

Today the House Martins are preparing to leave; the Swallows are already on the wing with their young, encouraging them to fly further than before - ready for their long journey ahead...

Skeins of birds fly up

Above the cooling landscape

Winter is coming

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....

Hark, the Hurricane

The bringer of winds makes her presence felt, even here in our forest home...

Katia shouts! Trees bow

Before her ire. Dogs and I 

Watch from indoors, safe.

September

Now we're moving into my second favourite season, it's time for the smells of autumn - garden bonfires, hot spiced chai to warm cold hands and wet dogs, happy in the rain...

Woodsmoke curls, pale wisps.

Leaves turn over head, blue skies,

Fields of golden wheat

Sorrow and Shadows

Ill news, a quick blade

Slicing deep. My heart cries out

No! It cannot be... 

Autumnal Overtures

With the advent of the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, the weather has turned in my forest, bringing the tang of woodsmoke and shifting colours in her burnished cloak...

Sunkissed trees, light dims.

Leaves flutter in cold breezes

As the season turns

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

Communion

She walks through the gateway into the forest.  Overhead the trees move, swaying to the caresse of the winds. She hears them whisper; talking softly to themselves of countless cycles of moon and stars.  Beneath, the ground is thick with green moss.  It spreads like a cloak, flung from the shoulders of dryads to fall in soft emeralds at her feet.  Here there is no time save that of the trees themselves, ancient and deep in their knowledge.  Each step takes her further from the hard bright human world, and into the embrace of the forest kin.  They call to her in day-dreams and sing to her at night:  

“Little sister, step lightly to us, we miss your shadow-dances. Join, once more, with us beneath the bough-halls of our realm”.

She longs to return to her kin, yet she was, this time, born in the thick human flesh of mortals, a mistake, a curse. No longer does the wave of her hand create light in the dark or the breath from her lips swell the winds among the hills.  Deeper into the hallowed halls of her kind she steps, searching, longing for a way to shed this skin of the hard, bright chrome world. 

Moonlight slants between branches, the air is sweet with the flowers scattered like blessings in the luminous pools where it falls. Placing a hand here, there, each trunk she passes holds the memories of a hundred years and more, moving with slow sap, keeping the secrets of this woodland world.  The feathered folk who dwell here call from the air, to their children who lie in their nests, lined with the hair of squirrel and soft rabbit. 

She raises her arms in the glade, eyes closing as she tilts back her head. With that smile on her face, she goes through the old steps. Slowly at first, for each time feels harder than the last as if learning the dance anew.  She plucks her long skirts where they trail the dark earth, and she dips and turns.  Here between the shade of the leaves and the moonbeams with their bright motes she dances.  Her hair streams out as she spins, laughing, whirling. Here is her communion. 

And soon between the arching giants, in glimpses of what might have been, she sees beyond the veil of human eyes, sees her kin. They are smiling shyly at her, softly, sadly, the sister they have lost. Yet wanting not to call her to them for fear of her bringing the mortal world too close they turn and slip away... sad in their ken that she is lost to them, but not for all time.

The colours and magick she weaves in her shadow-dance spin out, fine filaments, glitter and cobwebs between the trees, a weir between worlds. Her dances work a bridge between fae and mortal realms, sending love to her kin and their thoughts to her. Suddenly she stops, and falls, breathless, to the loam, she lies back and watches the branches criss-cross overhead, a frail and perfect lace against the velvet dark sky.  The smile stays on her lips, though, satisfied, replete.  She has felt her kin reach out and soothe her mind. She is not alone, never alone, and she is loved.