Feather, Pencil, Trowel & Moon

Dreaming My Way Back

I am day-dreaming my way back to Ireland.
I hold the vision of stepping through the mist,
And back into the surreal that is real.
That is the wilds of Connemara.
That is the power of Hag’s Head.
That is the “ceol agus craic” of McCarthy’s Pub.
That is the carved rock of Knockroe.
That is the flashing swirl of surf and stone at Bunmahon Bay.
I am conjuring the magic needed to get me there.
I am summoning the Ancestors to guide me.
All day I day-dream of how to get back.
All night, I am already there.

The Song of Stone

I wonder if there is a word for the deep longing your hands feel when they dream of once again touching the cool mist-damp stone of an Irish wall? One built by other hands, standing in a long line to the crashing ocean, with verdant green tufts of moss and lichen, the burgeoning leaves of new growth, and the dry sinuous scandent runners of last season’s vines calling your fingers to trace their trails around each gentle line and curve of blue Carboniferous limestone, formed 370 million years before becoming one of hundreds of miles of meandering wall. The longing for soft fingertips on rough rock, feet on rolling green patchwork, head in pale gray clouds, black rooks cawing, painted sheep bleating, salty tears splashing salty dew, while the ocean sings the song of the First Mother, beckoning us, all. The wall leads the way home. The stones are the portal. The hands ache to return, to touch, to hold tight. The spirit wants to follow. And, I wish I could find the perfect word to describe it.

Chasing Waterfalls

By the ruins of a stone cottage at the threshold of Connemara, vines and roots reaching over the roofless walls, open door and windows, like forest fingers and tongues feeling their way and preparing to swallow whole the structure. It was there that I first felt you.

Stepping carefully through the bare barbed branches of bramble, and over a floor of soft moss and damp mushrooms, the black-faced sheep beyond sang their one-note song, while the crows in the oaks tried to drown you out. It was there that I first heard you.

A River Witch, a long way from home, in a place I had never been, but was welcomed back to, I touched the water of ocean, well, river, bog, lake and sea to my lips, and I chased waterfalls all across Ireland. But, you were the first, that day when I found you.

Portals

Ireland has many, many portals.
Openings to Otherworlds.
Thresholds to Territory Unknown.
Windows can be potent portals, too.
Especially the ones you look out,
when you are looking to go in,
deeper inside a place, or yourself.
Or, both at the same time.
The eyes doing the same as the heart,
Wandering. Wondering.
Searching, across the view and landscape.
Touching on gorse, oak, and stone.
Gazing down a length of river.
Or, imploring the colorful shop fronts,
with their history and other stories,
to remain in the mind’s eye,
long after the viewer has travelled on.
Portals take you to other places,
but, they also bring you back.
Back inside your own bones.
Back Home.

The First Ancestor

 

 

The Ocean,
She is The Old One.
Seanmháthair (Grandmother).
Máthair Mhór (Great Mother).
Máthair Chríonna (Wise Mother).

I stood beside the primordial womb waters of that First Mother with the ruins of castles and looming cliffs behind me, on both sides of Ireland, staring far out to where seals and whales and tentacled beings rode swells with Pirate Queens and Sea Gods. Where the rivers flow out and the great waves crash in. Where She answers the song of the Moon with the dance of Her tides. And I stood in the foam and the spray, and spoke the words of a homecoming, a remembering, like an incantation, that the gulls carried away, far out to sea, along with my heart.