Crone in Corrogue: Wild Wisdom of the Elder Years

Glorying in the elder years, a time of spirituality, service and some serious sacred activism

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Year's End Dark Moon

Hasn't 2018 been the oddest year energetically? It has felt both overfull and stop and start. Old routines and ventures appear to be coming to the end. Or at least need to go fallow for a year. Meanwhile, what is beginning is also a bit lame and halt. Nothing is quite what it seems to be. Or at least that is what this crone divines.

We have just passed the night of the dark moon at the darkest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. In our rural fastness,without street lighting, night is very tarry at this time of year. And so, too, at this dark moon did my knees and bones complain and beg to rest. 2018 has been exhausting,personally and collectively.

Hecate came to me in a journey recently accompanied by a black Labrador (those sweet silly canines) and a wolf. Instead of  holding antern at the crossroads,she held a ball of fire in her right hand. ( I almost wrote write hand! The hand that I do my writing with at any rate.)  That fire still burns brightly at any rate.

But as this winter has descended I have had to begin to make terms with my aging body. I am tapping this post in bed, resting my aching knees that are complaining in a way that will brook no argument.

There is much that is wonderful about conring and aging.But winter has us make terms with our mortality and physical vulnerability. I wrote this poem two years ago during Joanna Powell Colbert's 30 Days of Hecate e-course. It rings more true than ever this winter.

Aging and Dying...

the dying is not hard to do
but the brain cells fizzing away
the confusing clash and flash
losing one word
then a face
the recall
when the elephant memory
goes to the graveyard
living that is hard
I pray to be brave
patient
and kind to those
strangers

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Bee Smith has enjoyed a long relationship with SageWoman as a contributor, columnist and blogger. She lives in the Republic of Ireland, teaches creative writing and is a member of the Irish Art Council's Writers in Prisons panel. She is the author of "Brigid's Way: Celtic Reflections on the Divine Feminine."    

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