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.