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The Perfect Beltane

The cool touch of dew
across cheeks and brow,
a single pink dianthus emerging
between stones,
sunlight kisses through leafy canopies,
a circle of flower petals,
a gentle hoop of wild raspberry cane
making a celebration arch
under which to sit
on a broad flat stone,
gooseberry bushes by my knees
and the sound of wild turkeys
rising from the valley,
as the sun lifts steadily
into the sky.
It is this small magic
of living I crave
and delight in,
the silent ceremonies
of surprise and skin
that arise before my eyes
and sink into my bones,
the very day itself
the ritual handbook
of a wild witch alone.

Goddess of the untamed shore
smooth my edges into gratitude,
tumble me into letting go,
teach me what it means
to let my longings
ebb and flow.
Roll me until my to-do list
becomes rubble
and my bindings become loosened
by the touch of salt and time.
Carve me back to my
most essential self,
erode my need to know
until it is replaced
by space
around my heart
to grow.
Sweep over me
and leave me expansive and free,
help me to remember
to wait for nothing
while somehow also being
as patient as the moon.
Encourage me to
chart my own course
and steer my own craft,
trusting the transformations wrought
by truth and trust and tide.

I chose not to follow crows today,
but turned away
to follow the mist instead,
descending down a rocky hill
and into an underworld of my own making,
in which I laid aside
the pressures of pleasantness
and considered how it would feel
to lay my drive down
across the stones too
and walk away,
leaving it gasping in surrender
between a flattened cracker of frog
and finality.
I knelt beside blue chicory
with a cloak of white fog across my shoulders
feeling weary of smiling,
thin of patience,
and with only a thread of faded magic
beating feebly beneath my skin.
I pondered messages from purple asters,
gravel beneath my knees,
and resisted reaching for rosehips
through the ebbing bowers of poison ivy.
An unripe persimmon, gleaming purple-red
below the bright white sky,
rolled into my path
and as I made my way back up the hill
two vultures rose silent and hulking from the trees,
so close I heard their feathers whispering together.
I felt an ember quicken quietly
beneath my breast
and on the gliding motion of broad wings,
I was reminded that we can always
choose which way to go,
and that even thin and tattered magic
is worth
savoring.

 Goddess of the sacred pause
 please grant me the courage
to lay aside swiftness
and take up slowness,
to embrace limitations as learning,
silence as stabilizing,
waiting as worthy,
and sitting as divine.
Goddess of the sacred pause
help me to know stillness as strength,
patience as powerful,
and healing time
as holy necessity.

I fell down hard this week and injured my ankle pretty badly. It has been hard to go from the magic of mobility, to spending time in bed with my leg elevated and an ice pack on. As is common to note when dealing with an unexpected experience, I am noticing how very much I took for granted my own swift movements through the day, the everydayness of being able to easily get myself where I need to go.

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.

I watched fairies dance
in the midsummer twilight
waltzing with fireflies
and skimming through treetops.
It is true that they could have
been moths,
but as I stood in the shadows
with my children
all of us gazing upward in wonder
the sky deepening to night
I saw the certainty shining
in their faces,
the enchantment in their eyes
and I knew
without a doubt
that we were seeing the true nature
of these winged creatures.
And we will never forget what
it felt like to watch
real fairies taking flight
right before us
as we dared to name
the magic in the night.

Last week, my sister-in-law hosted a fairy tea party for our little ones at the river. We had an enchanting time eating tiny cupcakes and drinking sparkling raspberry-chamomile tea while wearing fairy wings as the sky dipped toward twilight. Then, we headed home and the kids asked me to stay out and catch fireflies. As we did so, a "fairy" suddenly flew across the sky in front of us and it is this experience that I share in my poem above. It was a priceless, magical, powerful moments with my son and daughter. The next day they wrote tiny notes of thanks to the fairies who let us see them and set up a fairy-sized tea party with tiny cups of cherry juice as an offering beneath the rose bush.