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