I Could See My Breath

I could see my breath
on the Lammas early morning air,
the season surely shifting
summer beginning to fade,
though not yet over,
for the heat may yet return,
but this morning,
the cool mist of my being
lept forth to join the swirling
dance of one season’s waning,
as another steps up
to sweep me off my feet
in wonder, gratitude, delight.

Seeing my breath
as the sun creeps over
the ripening apple boughs
reminds me that time,
though we created
our own notions of it,
is never still always moving,
farther on along
the spiral of life’s journey,
and we are not ever
in the same place,
though the seasons
repeat and reappear.

We see each season
with the fresh sight
of all the experiences
between the last time
the year’s wheel
turned this way,
the breath I breathe
in and out,
the cool morning air
filling me with life and promise,
the scents of Autumn
hinted in the reminder
that as I inhale and exhale
I change the essence
of my being as surely
as I alter the whole of creation
round about me.

The Harvest

Today I will go and pluck
the ripe produce
from my garden,
in raised boxes
made so I need not bend
my slowly aging back.

Colourful beets with their leaves
are waiting for the dinner pot,
courgettes yellow,
cucumbers green,
petals of golden orange calendula
and three colours of nasturtiums,
there were peas and mangetout,
but not yet the maize,
the peppers, beans
or the masses of tomatoes
some surely destined
for more than salads,
the apples are not yet ready
though the trees hang heavy,
and with now little sun or heat
yet three figs ripened into sweetness,
there are a few random carrots
and sunflowers undaunted.

Today I will go and pluck
the ripe produce
from my garden,
in raised boxes
made so I need not bend
my slowly aging back.

This is the time of gratitude,
so much more real
in the growing of my own,
the days I stand in awe
of what earth and sun and water
do to small dry seeds
bursting forth against the odds,
the birds, the bugs,
to provide for me nourishment
in exchange for their nurture;
I offer my thanks for these gifts
of grace and graft
brought to harvest
in a cooperative dance
between me and earth and sky,
as life to continues bearing its fruits,
providing food for feasting.

Today I will go and pluck
the ripe produce
from my garden,
in raised boxes
made so I need not bend
my slowly aging back.

I Weave with Words

[I’m reading Max Dashu’s amazing book Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion,700-1100]

I weave with words

Letters skein across the page
like the wild flight of geese in autumn,
letters turned into words
on the distaff of inspiration,
trailing ideas
ready for the loom
of the mind.

I weave with words.

Dangerous am I
as the weaving women of old
discrete words becoming incantations,
the singing of thought
and perception into form,
altering the reality of the page,
from the blank white leaf
into the mottled sheet
with images drawn out
and curling under each other.

I weave with words.

By setting out the warp and woof
of line and length,
that which moved me into the
gilded light of flow and form,
the dark recesses of passion
impassive before the shuttle
thrown back and forth line on line,
the pen creating
the garment of imagination,
the tapestry of alliteration,
metaphor and rhythm
maybe only I can hear
as I sway at the paper loom
and dream aloud
for others.

I weave with words.

Word -weaving
from my word hoard,
language neutral until
contextualised in pattern,
shaping ideas into form,
leaving no dangling threads
to unravel my inspired thoughts,
cutting the last thread
at just the right place.

I
weave
with
words.