Any Wednesday

Today I walked with the gods, ancestors and spirits who dwell in the landscape nearest where I now reside.

I walked passing houses storied by the people who live in them. Storied by their inhabitants through acts of love, violence, indifference, hope, and despair. Storied by those who chose wisely and with honour, and those who are trapped in decisions made in haste and acts of self-indulgent deceit.

I walked beyond these and also by the hedges and banks that are home to the small ones, furred and feathered, sheltering from the increasing and inconsistent cold. I walked alone. I walked shedding feelings of sadness, of promises made to me and not kept, of days never allowed to achieve the potential invested in them. I shed these. I walked. I took photos to focus my intention and attention on the world of nature all around me.

It was any Wednesday
as I left the tarmacked road
and moved along a different trail,
but it was not what it seemed.

It was any Wednesday
as I followed the beckoning of the stream,
and moved along the muddied way,
but it was not what it seemed.

It was any Wednesday
yet bore revelations most profound
through the yawning gate of deepest winter,
and I saw with newly opened eyes,
and I heard with unblocked ears,
and I felt with reawakened senses,
walking with and amid those
who long before walked paths
not so different from my own
in following the lure of the winter’s day.

I watched the robin watching me,
saw the wren dart past from a withered hedge,
listened to the wind in the bare branched trees
and through dry hedge leaves,
I saw the preening swans and flying ducks,
and heard the stream coursing relentlessly to the sea.

We do not know the musics
our ancestors sang to
nor the languages of their song,
but we can know what inspired them
in the squelching mud,
the sharp bite of cold wind,
the warmth of midwinter sun,
the tumbling of the stream’s waters
and the calling of the wild things:
the quacking of ducks,
the cackling of herons,
the crawking of ravens,
the thrumming whoosh of swans skeinning low,
the howling of hounds.

We can still see bold oaks
twisting ivy and whithered bracken,
a cheeky robin,
a furtive wren,
a flitting band of sparrows,
but we must open the inner eye
and allow the deeper ear to hear
and the mind to pause its ceaseless doubt;
we must be willing to walk and pause,
to greet and be greeted
to watch and be watched
to wait upon and welcome
those unanticipated,
those least expected,
those who are willing to pull back
the curtain between now and then
as yet is a step we take together.

It was any Wednesday
but no Wednesday nor any day
will ever be the same.

The Old Ways

The old ways the paths
we no longer fully understand,
folkways and ancestralways,
those based on superstition
those based on the tales of wise women
those based on reading the omens,
of following the signs attentively
of listening and watching
aware apprehensive anxious,
but trusting the truths revealed.

The old ways would be paths
confounding us who think we
know better nature’s workings,
because modernity’s teachings,
forgetting the mystery
ignoring the majesty
flaunting our mastery,
shelter us from our ignorance,
of what we fail to accept
refuse to acknowledge.

The old ways are harsh paths
whose realities would stun us
whose practises would shock us
whose consequences would startle us
and leave us in our ignorance exposed,
for we have forgotten
the power of belief
the strength of conviction,
having left them behind
favouring what we consider
the strength of rationality
the power of proof.

The old ways were dangerous paths,
not always leading to anticipated destinations,
the results were not always consistent,
but neither are ours
cloaked in the respectability
of science’s experimental methodologies,
for we still wander lost
unable and unwilling to know
read the signs and accept the omens
within us and around us,
unable to name our true paths
and thinking we can make our own ways.

Written reflecting on this image —

one I have seen in several places not far from where I live, including the garden on the hill behind my cottage, there it was a magpie.