the raven

I just saw that Hilde asked me if I would consider putting up the poem I read at the poetry afternoon back in October so here it is. It came out of my experiences at the Druid Herbcraft Course last May. Though the word “magical” is somewhat overused in Druidic circles (I think) that week really was. Blessings.

Cae Mabon

And afterwards, back among polyglot crowds,
Swallowed daily in the Underground’s maw,
Treading the commercial canyons,
Rapt by the shimmering oil-streaked city,
I remember that hidden valley,
The path through the woods to Llyn Padarn
Where the distant sight of Yr Wyddfa
Drifted in and out of wind-blown cloud;
Where the tumultuous grace of water
Sang day and night
And the cuckoo’s two-noted call
Hung again and again in the air
Over slate angularities of slopes
Where the bluebells were dying into green seed
And foxgloves unclenched the fists of their buds.

She came down from her herb-hung tower
Walking into that valley with armfuls of flowers:
St.John’s Wort, plantain, comfrey, hawthorn,
Walking between the plants in the name of the Goddess
To teach us to heal and be healed.

After the hot tub
High among fir trees
Air caressing my skin,
Tall as an immortal
I stood at the dawn of the world.

Past Merlin’s Pool with its torn curtain of waterfall
We approached Dinas Emrys.
Climbing out of the mundane world
We came to the glade below the fort and –
I was the beech tree intertwined with the oak.
My leaves shook in the wind
As hooves thundered into this place of exile;
I was the Celtic warlord building his stronghold
There, where Vortigern’s tower had tumbled
And Merlin made his prophecies –
Young in the ways of magic; old in knowledge.
So we went down to a reed choked mere,
Sat there in enchanted silence
As branches of sessile oak, thick with moss
Soft as the pelt of a fox, discarded silver drops
Hoarded from a rain shower . They pattered through the leaves
And fell around us like intermittent blessings.
Sun flickered through foliage, over cobalt wild hyacinth
Haphazard in the grass,
Sunlight fractured through my lashes
And I was all the light that ever flooded over the hills
And filled the valleys.

The last afternoon – I had fallen,
Slipped on shining wet slate –
Shocked beyond thought
I leaned out over the restless lacework of the stream
Watching the white rush down to the lake.
And aeons below me, a slug, anchored on stone
Wavered over its own small torrent
That raced between two pebbles.

So, like us, she left the valley,
Long black hair floating on the wind.
She gave us buds and flowers and seeds
And remembers us still in her herb-hung tower.