A new place to share

I have just published a new blog that will run along side Gray Bear, which is called Dryad’s Vision. The reason for adding this new blog is explained briefly in the first post. It is interesting that I tried to set it up last week, but I just couldn’t get it to work. It seems that my birthday is an auspicious day for this new venture to be born.

Now I’m Sixty-four

Well, I have been reflecting about being 64 today. I have been ranging back over birthdays past. I have been amazed at how different my life really is now from when I fleeting pondered this age in my twenties and thirties.

I would never have imagined I’d that two husbands would have divorced me. It was inconceivable that I would be living in a country different from that of my birth. To be a vegan was certainly a completely alien notion, even in my California days, although for eight years I was a vegetarian there. None of the assumptions I made about my future in those years is what I am currently living. Those assumptions were much, much narrower and more parochial.

Certainly, in my twenties I never imagined I’d have gone to university (late thirties into my forties) let alone do as well as I did, which was astonishingly well considering my background. In my thirties, I did not entertain the thought that once I plotted a path of vocation that it would not manifest, let alone that I would completely alter my spiritual path and embrace a pagan one.

One thing I take away from these ruminations is that life can never be planned out for a straight from A to Z journey. At least, in my opinion would, to do so would seriously compromise the opportunity for growth and learning. It would hinder the possibility that chance can throw up amazing options and opportunities. It would deny the gift of serendipity and the wonders of risk taking, to whatever extent risk is comfortable.

I rejoice and give thanks that today I have been granted the privilege to be alive, that I am in good health as far as I know, and living in a place that sings to my soul and dances with my spirit. I celebrate having an amazing partner who wants to create with me a Golden Autumn to share together and engage the Mysteries of the Winter of our current passage.

 

 

The Dragon

Today is the day I grieve for the Dragon.

I do not honour the slayer saint, patron of the land I love, for the Dragon here, like the Snake in one of my ancestral lands signify other realities. Yes, dangerous but are we not untamed as well.

For these may indeed pose a threat to the powers of state and church, but they are the realities which sing in my woman-soul and nurture me at levels deep and broad.

This is the day I remember the wild energy of women dead and gone, those live and present, and ponder on those not yet amongst us.

It is a day I hold close the transformative Mother energy of Earth, the raw and raging dynamism of the planet which is so close under foot and seem seldom enough that we try to convince ourselves that our world is a calm and tranquil place.

Today is the day I celebrate the Dragon.

For the Dragon energy lives near us always and no saint could extinguish this potent force resident within our souls.

Let her free to roar again today.

Let her roar to call us to action to protect the land, the trees, the rocks, the rivers.

Let the roaring turn grief into deeds.

Let the roaring turn loss into renewal and regeneration.

Let the roaring turn pain into the hymn of our wild selves singing with the wild Earth, affirming we will be tame and tamed no more.

Let her free to roam again today.

The Hippo Moment

Step by step
moving the surface interface
from air to water,
sliding into an alien
yet not unfamiliar medium,
warm surrounding water
strangely supporting the body

Buoyancy,
from long ago
a feeling recalled,
the facility for deeply held
memory kicking in,
before birth
this sensation recognised
again as known
when eons before
the only place.

Memory,
of fear and thrashing,
not a distant life
but this one
bathed in anxiety
fretting afraid to leave
the security of the side
for deeper waters.

Encouragement,
reassurance
in holding onto the confidence
of another for whom
the medium of terror for me
is one of pleasure and freedom,
slowly learning to trust
the presence and the voice
that it can be done,
head under the surface,
glide, kick, stroke, breathe
head under
blow bubbles
reach and turn to the side
breathe,
suddenly it seems
swimming.

Now comes enjoyment
relaxation and achievement,
otter companions unseen
enter the pool causing
mischief chitting encouragement
showing how easy
it is to be in water,
laughter at slow success.

Lesson done,
high fives and weariness,
for it is well into evening,
sliding into the night,
time to go,
time to change the mediating
medium of being once more,
taking the steps,
almost weightlessness
alters in the moments
step by step
trading selkie skin
for the human one,
another transformation
there is the time between
being water borne
and once more air held
a sudden awkwardness
when gravity is once more
felt with every bone and muscle
weightedness returns.

Ah, the hippo moment.

I dedicate this poem to my amazing swimming instructor Kelly Deakin. The invisible otters and ‘The Hippo Moment’ as I called it made us laugh. A big thank you!