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.