Last month I wrote about how this ancient landscape speaks to me of Danu, The Ancient One with her occult origins. To me, she speaks to the restless Inner Nomad, but also to that yearning for belonging.This poem transmits some of what She, through the land, has spoken to me of who She is and will always be.
This Place is Sídhe
In all the nomad traipsing
out of Asia, over Europa,
the fording of the Don and the Danube,
the leaning into the Alpine upland,
trudging over low valleys,
hoving up onto the Breton shore,
riding waves in featherweight coracles
This eternal peregrination,
this being with rock, bog, plain, plateau-
being with the amazing made manifest-
overseen by linnet and sea faring oystercatcher
this witnessing Creation
recognised in all and each new face
Why is it that we seek peace belonging to place?
Why make a totem of river spirit or sea otter?
Why should swans on the lake signify?
Or the nemeton of beech casually planted?
Or the boulder field left when a glacier
passed by many, many millennia ago?
Why should any one place make us pilgrims
inviting sanctuary – Come. Rest. Stay here. Belong.
There is no one place of belonging -
just all-place, the every place with the open heart,
praise singing, knowing the divine beat
tapped from stone, or ringing iron, crackling flame
babbling in tongues of fresh water and sea -
Always and everywhere and will be - here.
In each wave upon the wind wracked lough
the wild white horses carry us on and on.
In each step along the way - crossing continents,
drinking the holy wayside well water,
baptised by quenching springs cascading over rock walls,
the belonging is always moving peacefully along
within, below, behind, beside the left, beside the right, above.
Journey, too, is a sacred place of belonging.
This place – this all- place that is every place -
is She who graced it while we were passing through.
Whether one stays or chooses to get up and go
the grace of everyplace that is all-place
this one-place mirror world lives, its heart beat
her eternal flame that is always home.
Copyright Bee Smith 2015