My Great-Grandmother's House is Gone

My great-grandmother's house is gone now.
Nothing left but farmland
     returning to old habits,
and a few outbuildings as vague reminders
           of once-human habitation.
The fallow fields emerge,
                                a mandala of sweet pea and poppy,
      summer scents swaying
               with the delight of their own pollen      
and everywhere there are saplings,
a silent people moving slowly.

In search of heirlooms,
                              I enter an outbuilding subsumed in kudzu
 and find a box--          
                          empty
  soaked through with rain
          and the floor’s damp compost.

Hands clutching soil,
                     I walk out into the sun,
mind like milkweed

I take off my clothes and sit
in the waiting grass.

  

  

August Blackberries

The children are picking blackberries
     and so am I,
basking in the sticky haze of out-reached brambles,
tempting and wooing those with open mouths
          and patient eyes to its side.

I am surrounded by dark deliciousness,

lost in a wilderness of simple joy,
     everything just as it should be,
the blackbirds singing with ease
while bees find heather blossoms
to make sweet what good they have,
just as I reach into the prickles, glad,
     hands bleeding berry and blood,
to fill these hours with a heavy harvest.

          Each berry is a heart,
exuding fecund life that carries on,
each summer's end a frenzied beat in time
until the next cycle gives out its
                         blessings.

                         These little gifts
hum with the sun, perfected
     by a thousand warm rays
     and the wild welsh wind that
whips across this ancient mountain side,
     once a glacier's path to sleep,
now a grassland of gorse and heather,
     broom and blackthorn.

The rain has been kind and also fierce,
     awakening the earth to her softer side,
          and I had forgotten the delight
     of standing quiet with ten thousand fruits,
listening to each murmured story

     rise up from the roots like sap in spring,

singing the earth and me into deeper life.

I cannot forget this moment
as life holds out both hands,

all bright with child-like pleasure.

 
 
 

The Seeker

Darhion rode out with eyes of sea,
to see the world as it could be.
He found the ninth wave, a dew-gemmed brow,
whispers deep of forgotten vows.
He found the fay mound, a dark-papped breast,
wonders down there--ancestral best.
He found the haunt of dwarves and fair elves,
digging in caves, singing in wells.

Darhion rode into other realms,
the trees his ladder, a star his helm,
No more to wander ruins ash-cold
but join the Tales of ageless old.
Lords and labours there cannot abide,
but Myth took Darhion in stride.
He saw the world as it could be
and joined the Host of Good Faery.

 
 
 
 

A Prayer for Love

Goddess, hear my prayer
as I lay my soul bare:
Give me a man maimed . . .
. . . for me to heal.
Give me a man tamed . . .
. . . self-controlled will.
Give me a man afeared . . .
. . . of he himself.
Give me a man endeared . . .
. . . by his heart's wealth.
Give me a man who seeks . . .
. . . after Your ways.
Give me a man so meek . . .
. . . I will obey.
Give me a man quite wise . . .
. . . beyond his years.
Give me a man with eyes . . .
. . . that ease my tears.
Give me a man of Thine own choice:
Let he and I share heart and voice.
He and I forever entwined--
unexpected as divined,
But merry and married, one being:
He'll be my eyes; I'll be his seeing.

So mote it be, as You decree.