Thank You

Earth, a Herkimer Diamond, internal prismatic imperfections tuning the frequency of bonds built beneath the weight of Time, Fey flashing iridescent reflective emanating planes and obelisk promontories. 

Air, a pheasant feather the colors of the path in Autumn beneath the trees, fluent, magnificent symbol of ardor and increase.

Fire, a white, wicked column of wax, consecrated for Vigil and Wishing and Vision.

Water. a Woman wrought from Earth, iron in the Blood, forged by Fire, Spirit shining, inspired by Air, Mind as encircling as the atmosphere, and her Soul the Holy Cup of Wonder, communion Grail, Source of all Love, perfect and pure. 

 Moonrise swings North between the great arms of the Old Cherry Tree from its Summerbed beyond the break in the hedgegrow.  now that the season allows for a view of the southwestward rolling hills, i have taken to sitting and watching the light sink and the dark rise from a white plastic rocking chair in the middle of nothing in particular.  there is no Other to keep a seat for, so i may settle unceremonious and strange without Second Thinking.  on clear, quiet nights i go out and implore the wheeling stars with my mind empty and my heart full.  

there will be Dancing, returning to your body, electron cloud chronicle of incarnate life, compelled to spin and beat and Breathe more deeply, brief reprieve.  there will be Curiosity, voracious vigil candle pilot light shining off the silver spurs that urge you forward across talus passes and wide, unfamiliar creeks, the wind roaring in the trees, Everything at once from Everywhere.  there will be Friction, holy blood transubstantiated, Seelie Cup of Wonder, its glitter and fizz infusing your fingers and soaking the tip of your nose, spilling out and seeking Portals. 

 cold begins to weave through the windows in the evening, and i wake to a high-country killing frost, bright against acres of deep grass in a morning that comes on now so slow.

This Years Theme Song(s)

the winter coat emerges, instantly comforting and familiar.  i inventory the pocket contents:  a large, dark stone with what appears to be an H etched into it, two buttons, one depicting an anchor, a pod of clear resin encasing the word Blessings, a wee flake of hay from last-years town-over christmas creche, a white quartz worry stone ive carried with me almost twenty years now, a lighter with the word LIGHTER written in punch tape along the side, a stone i found at the edge of the Ocean, an acorn, and seventy-two cents in change. 

i drank a bottle of champagne with a shrewd and beautiful woman at my favorite brasserie. vanilla savon and a dark, polished rose.  fell through the giggling wormhole of long-dead love fleetingly resuscitated, familiar and pontificate,its exhumed skeleton amid the sirens and against the streetlight, dancing up through inside jokes and shibboleths, marveling all the while at the tenacity of such invisible filaments.  found the good woodstove going at Sister Mothers house, and a perfect, tiny basket containing an inexhaustible amount of love.

bare branches and dead, pendant leaves hone the edge of the wind, molecularly compact density of air, that cold creekwater feeling foretelling, with its signature scent, the soon-approaching snow. 

the Dark tenders its tithe from Day and comes to collect more quickly as axial gears dance our northern antipode oblique to the elliptical, casting runeshadows on the shaggy rolling green over which cry the Crows and the other day a skyful of sound like the Earth cracked open releasing the sum total Cri de Coeur since Time began.  the Wild Geese follow the Great Magnet south toward renewed warmth and plenty.

you tell me, little by little, what it means to you and i will tell you, little by little, what it means to me.  by those stars shall our journey be charted.

theres a scarf to knit and a leaf to catch, and music.  i try to fill my quota for sleep and tea and laughter, for noticing the rose pink crushed velvet chaise on fire sunrise and the steady presence of the stars.  in my dream there were horses coming up from summer pastures, and the White Horse with the Red Forelock, whos name the Old Man asked me.

Love is the only thing i have to give.
 

 the kind of quiet that comes after some great struggle sets in

 i go about my business and read and knit and sit in front of a flick now and then

i try to heed my own advice, and am satisfied with the effect

listen to the songs your soul sings while youre sleeping

keeping open to all thats beautiful and unexpected

gentle with yourself, just sit there, a few sweet seeds in an open, outstretched hand,

and something will rise to its own brave occasion

and come to be called companion

 the nights are still full of chirps and whirring

i listened to a troika of some unfamiliar insect triangulated in the trees

each speaking in perfect turn of their Being

the stars are bright and of such a density it is as if they spilled

from some celestial silo across the fallow field of night

the thick river of The Holy Road and the rest in augured constellations

Orion rises now at dawn, and will appear
familiar and encouraging companion of winters long dark contemplations

  by the next Turning of the Wheel.

ladies in the waiting room
clucking out farm tales in hushed tones
grandfathers chased around the barn by freshly beheaded turkeys
hypoallergenic alpaca wool
the many virtues of barn cats and the problem of grandchildren
becoming attached to beef cattle
 its this, and the old men in greasy plastic gimme caps set high on sun-leathered heads
holding court at the feed store counter with their coffee and packets of crackers
discussing with the self assurance of men who have worked in slow, patient unison
with the very Earth herself for their somehow suddenly failing entireties
the price of corn, the quality of hay, the auction
the antics of grandchildren
the damnable exploits of livestock
its this, and the mist in the lowlands in the morning, the rolling luxury of true Earth
where every moment something is different and beautiful
a bird, a flower, a quality of light
everything a story of something it took a million years to make

that called me here

and keeps me, as close to Home as im likely to be.

 Autumn comes to Middle Earth.

the pack and i follow our noses down new paths

the afternoon sun is strong, but dew beads a spiders web

slung across the low green grass of the path and i know

if i try to capture its jewelry with my camera

the dogs will sense my focus and trample the miraculous installation

in that wild abandon of impulse and curiosity

they seem to exhibit most in these threshold seasons

so i stand close while they snuffle the edge of the wood and whine at my dawdling

while i marvel at having intersected with such a

fleeting, fragile manifestation of the magick inherent

in the natural world.

 red Rosehips, purple Asters, Fir babies and Oaklings

all the glorious flora in a

chromatically harmonious, loosely knitted mass

singing Hosannas to the newborn Fall,

shining in sun and glowing in shadow.

 i have felt bereft of late, and knew the only cure was to realign

remember myself as a welcome member of the woods and hills

my face kissed by the low, strong Sun, the Wind running its fingers through my hair

the energy of the Earth rising up through my bootsoles

my blood full of oxygen and wonder

the pure joy of the Dogs, the flash and cry of a Jay

the smell of pinesap and crushed Juniper,

the Land and the Lake and the Sky

and as an omen find a scrap of Coyote fur, to assure me.

 i am so renewed even the Asters in their profusion are miraculous.

Dogwood with their ghostberries and red coral bronchioles

Virginia Creeper a sudden, marvelous scarlet against the yet unyielding green of Buckthorn and Foxgrape

the Sky above just an illusion of blue, that dims and fades after

dinner into apricot and lavender and the imperceptible procession of 

the Stars

from which ive come to bear witness.

 Autumn.

threshold season, receding

i gave him away and the world received him gladly

hawk reunited with the sky

and to me my familiar internal obscurities returned

 paths edged in ivy and briar

lit only by what Lights inside me

the sight of a Turkey Buzzard brings me hope

the sound of the Crows gives me strength

and all the little birds that ease the ache just by their Being

last night i begged for dreams and got deep, blind rest instead

 

 did the Dump Wizard slip a tiny Wild Card into my change?

 

 some good advice i gave that i could really use myself, written here to remind me:

When we maintain a Vision it creates a space in the Field over time in that shape.  The more detailed the Vision, the more finely etched the shape whose outline resonates with an amplified frequency.  From the Chaos, from which springs the Ten Thousand Things, rises the External Manifestation of an intentional shift in Internal Reality, into a space made and waiting for it.

 and here the unframed days are gathered up, or swept away

 its been a subtle summer, no great cataclysms or awakenings

just the spread of sunlight and the spill of stars

peaches and meteors and watching the cornfields grow 

from rows of wee green chevroned blades

to a phalanx of sweetgrained legionnaires

their braided pollen tassels broadcasting news of

assurance for the future

into suggestive umbilical silks

and the pinstripe hayfields pushing up plush

 through which the wind would play in invisible waves

and now, cut, and dried, 

are spiral-bound, reconvened

to keep hide and Spirit entwined through another less generous season

 danced and swam and held a hummingbird in my hand

chased a rogue rhode island hen down the low stone wall

beheld the triple conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury

nurtured my own Triumvirate, terrestrial, no less a wonder

 there were no tomato sandwiches this year

there was no ocean

 the Path

practicing Honesty and Authenticity like learning to ride a bike

he said the tools we use are training wheels

a long bar for the highwire until we understand we cannot fall

we are the wire the walker the bar

 a bright hot day turns to overcast afternoon glare

we pass Time on our way up the winding stair

 toward the covet bed with linens soft as birth

where flesh is rendered into a watercolor with pigments of fire and earth

sparrows hush in the apricot tree as the immortal rain falls down

concupiscent is an adjective, cupidity a noun

 my body aches, but my mind has been as blank and untroubled as the naked page

quincunx colonnade reams i feed, leaf by leaf

into the roaring forge

into the insistent hungry feral foundry of my heart

all that armor now just so much scrap

a dull reflecting pool, dregs in the crucible.

how excellent and strange to feel light and air on those long imprisoned vulnerabilities

to harden them off like seedlings in springtime

to unroot with renewed vigilance the invasive, stealthy, rampant weeds

to feel the weight of fruit as it falls with perfect suchness into your hands

to honor the dark refuge of winter, to rest between incarnations

there is no cure for curiosity, its said, and no price i would ever accept for my wonder

God's Gift

Beyond, where the Wild Strawberries grow shy in their profusion, ephemeral treasures, and the garnet flesh of Cherries with their little stone hearts along the low wall where the Rabbits live.

Foxfire led Him through the Swamp and Thicket and its been a great comfort to have a Fellow Traveller for this little while; i Feign to see him to the World redeemed. Apprehension and Restlessness, the rain and shine, everything in crisis, in flux, the water running close to the ground, springing up to Bless the sudden Space between us. 

How Strange the threads rise and fall, the flash of color against the shadow of the Loom. 

Something Rising that demands release, something Greater than myself, Light pushing hard and fast against the cracks. 

We learn then that the Light is within us. With great black wings, Raven beats against our bodies, the cage of our bones, until we surrender to the Truth of the Light, and we are reclaimed, welcomed, into the Field. 

On The Bus:  Spring Comes to Point Leap

 The season when the rain makes the road a silver ribbon, and the water flooding the culverts reflects the burdened sky and you think youre seeing snow. Dusk stretches ductile into the dark of Night, the Breath of the World has given up its honed density for a sensual invitation to Space, and Rising.

 The wee shrubs begin to bud; tight, sweet scales of Spring fish flexing into the birds of Summer, slowly unfolding in the new heat that invokes the blood in everything to rise. Amid the Hickories I pick my way, hooves trodding last years leaves and empty shells. Standing on the fallen catwalk the wind finds me everywhere, and amid this magnificent Presence of the hills beyond and the sky above and the lake below, and the good, sweet air all around, I sense beneath my breastbone, the nest of my belly, some great and silent Conjunction.

 Metal chest hidden under torn pages of bark, cache of the Cartesian Wandering. Left creekbed china potshard for handpoured lead that had its irresistible force met with some immovable object. Left a little of my light behind between the trees, a signal flare to anyone out there beyond the pale that might still remember me. They say this stream runs for miles underground; drop that Porkpie down and find it four counties over. But for now theres the Hawk, the Cairn Grotto, and the sweet-talking Peepers who reserve their Hosannas for the space of three paces, happy, however, to sing witness to this Idyll as it is their own.

  I fly the flag of no Nation that would confine itself to a line in the sand of a war, scratched by a man on a map. Ungovernable. The trees bud and the creek rushes.

 Eve of May and the sky is deep electric blue. Someone kindled a Last Fire with fruitwood and you can smell the burnt sugar of newsprint they used. A series of hot, bright days, our spirits stretch out through our skins, the ache is welcome, and sweet. The blush of blood is on every succulent bud, the hills reborn in their gentle green. The bats are out, as low into the Last Light two geese, bound in tacit contract, fly over my head and I can hear the air hissing in displacement beneath their wings.  I sit outside at night and listen to the peepers in the creek, watch the stars, yet unobscured by leaves. The dark is wide and welcoming.

  There is a promontory at the end of a hogsback path through piney wood, past sacred stones and pools of blue-black water, where the wind blows you clean through at the cleft in the legs of Becoming, incantations of air and water, and a tree brought low at the edge of the descent, taking the weight. There is a hidden, winding stream, deep with rain and snowmelt in the Spring, its goatpath ascensions laughing in Trout Lily and Saxifrage, the Womb Stone around the bow where the light shines on broad, bright green blades and it sounds of the Chord of the Night before the Beginning.  There is a field, split by a tributary, where once there were a People, and their Spirits still circle the Traveller who approaches with reverence, and skin-listening.

 . Into the teeming Machine I go, without the ceremony of cigarettes or the blessing of breakfast or the elixir of tea, and they introduce some strange magick into my veins that rappels me down into senselessness and forgetting and send some ocular apparatus into me, to measure the health of my disease. Afterward, emerged from the unnatural university, we paddle across the lake and into dense capillaries where the Great Blue Heron rises sudden and slow from trees among the tussocks and you gladly follow after, where the fiddleheads congregate in intricate sylph kingdoms, vernix furred, unfurling their feathers of fronds. I am great at getting us forward, but possess no skill to steer.

 Long moments of Light, clouds like new lambs, the sky spring periwinkle blue. Wild mustard butters the fallow fields. A string of pearl days to offset our recent run on citrine, raindrops fat and soft until the Tesla transmissions begin, original electricity, the retort near and immediate.

 Rain rippling on the pond, brief spires of water and the endless concentric reverberations. The aperture of earth opens to accept the Blessing, a baptism for bud and bloom and leaf, with the roots receiving their fresh measure.

  I arrived here in the heart of winter, when all had receded into the least it needed to endure the grief of Demeter. It is something to imprint upon that emptiness, and witness it filled.