VOTE NOW! 2009 IMBOLC/LUGHNASADH PROSE ENTRIES

[Earthwoman]

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This category contains original essays, short stories and philosophical works for the current Eisteddfod.

[treegod]

Great Vision of the Ancients
Long ago, there were many different people, many different tribes, all spreading across the Land. They’d come from one source, but then they separated and their ways diverged from each other. They prospered and developed many tools and skills to live and survive. But as the tribes grew and grew in number, they stopped spreading across the Land for there was nowhere else to go, but instead became crowded in it. The warrior lodges grew more volatile, desperately fighting against each other, trying to gain power for their own tribes.

But the Land suffered and as the Land suffered the tribes suffered, making the warrior lodges fight even more intensely. The blood ran and formed pools, and heads and other trophies were piled high. The life of the Land’s fabric began to fray and unravel, and the tribes’ lives deteriorated in turn.

The Land cried out… Enough!

But the tribes could not hear, so immersed in their own suffering and violence they were.

ENOUGH!

Yet some did hear, women and men, those who knew the Land as soul mate, those whose bodies and souls were intimately in tune with the life of the Land. These Wise Souls knew what was happening, they listened to the Land, very carefully, to what it had to tell them, and they were led by its wisdom together. They gathered in a secret meeting, deep in a cavernous womb of the Land, and here, with their voices weaving across one another, their thoughts and ideas brewing together into one idea; to keep the Land in balance, the tribes must be in balance with it, and for the tribes to be in balance with it they must be in balance with each other. A vision formed of one diverse tribe as part of that Land, but which required much work to forge, much collaboration to manifest that vision.

They vowed to work together, for the Greater Good of Land and tribes, to pool together their knowledge and wisdom from which all of the tribes could draw upon as a common resource so that the tribes could grow in understanding of each other and relate to each other without resorting to war. Their energies could be channeled together for a common goal of peaceful creativity. And so the Druids were born, learned and spiritual people, networking among the tribes, giving council under the guidance of their vision for the Greater Good, coordinating and collaborating through the magnificent diversity of their tribes and speaking across their boundaries in a spirit of understanding.

There is One Earth and it is crying ENOUGH! It is asking for collaboration, it is asking for humanity to channel it diverse ways together into a common vision of a truly global humanity, at one with the Earth, not ripping apart the fabric of its existence.

And it asks for a new Druidry to guide this task, or at least women and men in tune with the Land, with the Earth, with Gaia, working together to pool their diverse wisdom and knowledge into a common vision, to speak across the boundaries of humanity and affirm that we can work together, becoming a contributing aspect of the Land’s creativity and evolution, to carry on the work of weaving its fabric, to become Artists, Teachers, Workers and Guides for the Land and its tribes.

[wyeuro]

This is an exerpt from a semi-autobiographical novel I've written. It is set in the 1960s and the character is fourteen going on fifteen.


How can a poet…?

It’s a question of how a poet can earn a living.

You type it out neatly and post it to a literary magazine, or an unpleasant, usually radical political magazine that always has a short, squat poem on P. 24, with an injured tone in shades of pain and almost no meaning. That’s the advice you generally get. That’s the respectable way. You mingle with poets who hang out in dark places drinking wine and discussing lphilosophy, or in wild, even savage places remote from civilisation, yearning for bird flight, rapturous over wild beasts, roaring like lions or muttering like priests, trying to reach the very veins of life itself. That’s more realistic! But how, how can a poet ever earn? You write poems, of course, all the time. You think in metre. Rhyming couplets come as easily to your tongue as the elegant free verse that is your normal speech. You read Coleridge, Chaucer and Donne. You learn slabs of poetry off by heart. Your study is poetry. Your work is poetry. Your recreation is poetry.Your inspiration is poetry. Your solace is poetry. Your refuge is poetry. Your thought is poetry. Your way of life is poetry. Poetry is the veins of your life. You are a poet.

I am a poet.

I walk the streets a poet. I stalk the shore a poet. I tunnel through the city and suburbs in buses a poet. I am a poet, a poet, a poet.
As a poet I haunt bookshops, hurry through arcades, peer into pawnshop windows, sniff the doorways of Continental delicatessens, snooker-houses, penny arcades and pubs. I draw my hair forward to cover my ears. It is barely divided about my eyes enough for me to see through. It will never be long enough. A poet. One the world will know. I carry a book of poems under one arm, or an LP of folksongs, real ones, echt ones, five hundred years old or more in a string bag, and a genuine hand-made tagari from Greece over my shoulder, still smelling of the sheep that grew the wool and the herbs that dyed it. I am a poet. A real poet. A poet that the world will remember for a long time.

I play my guitar like a troubadour a lute, composing quatrains that rhyme so well and scan so perfectly, so trippingly off the tongue, to the speed of a jargoning arpeggio, never missing a beat, never stuck for a rhyme, conjuring up tidy, well-plotted magical romances in ancient dialects, well, not quite ancient, but in the language of the old ballads, so excellent am I, so famous among the ghosts, this thin-faced boy, this wolf-child Zeke, this troubadour, this poet. But where are they, these poems, my closely covered pages of poetry, my hundred lines a day or more – where are they? I am a poet. I don’t know what possesses me now, so that I have no inspiration, so that I write no poems, now when my juvenilia should bristle with the promise of genius, but I am a poet. I have ten or so poems in an exercise book – a few more than that, but only ten good ones - written in that peculiar fever that only ever strikes at dusk or at dawn, when for a moment everything is coming through obliquely, the sun’s rays refracted round the edge of the atmosphere, the radiance of a dream bent round the edge of awareness splayed out suddenly into an exceptionally intelligible spectrum, or when a poem bursts with the power and urgency of a birth into being, whole, finished and alive, as miraculous as a dung beetle, and as boisterous and busy. Oh, James Joyce described it somewhere…

They frighten people, my poems, everyone to whom they are shown. It’s true; people are frightened of poems, of poets. Not just the one about the crows pecking out lambs’ eyes, but also the one about the seed thinking its way out of its seedcoat into the life of the soil, its white root erupting with the passion of love, the one about the moon-eyed cats under the shrieking-with-stars midsummer sky, and the long, sad one about the Arabian princess who was really Lilly Wallace of 3B and her little golden-haired page boy on whom she doted, and who poisoned her vindictively for the damage she did to his soul.

These poems, all written in a year have stopped. I am a poet: why don’t I write poems? I am a poet. I am a poet. I am a poet.

Too young yet but a time will come and I will find those haunters of dark places of wine and philosophy, those dangerous wilderness canyons where the hermit poet sips at the clambouring surface of a crystal brook as if at those very veins of being, surely I will, and be a haunter of those darker places too, the lightless caverns below the sullen terrain of thought. I shall be known among them and hauled in like an old friend out of the cold, a poet, another poet, a true poet like themselves.

And they do exist, yes, these poets, and they have their meeting places all over the city, and yes, all over the country too, in remote farm-houses, in shacks by the sea. I'll find them, break parental bonds, break parental law, break away from this numb, dumb death of the poet I am, break, break, break…

Yeats, Dylan Thomas, T.S Elliot: poets. Great poets. I’ll be such another. And yet every day I come home from school, I look in the mirror and I see – the face of just some silly sheila, not even pretty, and nothing like the passionate wolf-child, the poet with the fascinating name: just me. And as everyone know's I can’t even throw straight, and no one I know likes poetry. Come away, child, they say, the kindlier ones. Try to be someone nice we can all love, not a poet. Poets are strange, uncomfortable, different. Be something else...

And yet, with or without inspiration, I am a poet. If I am a poet only in fantasy, then goodbye real life, goodbye reality. For I am a poet and must go…

wyverne /|\

[Papillon]

Apologies friends, the dark side of my muse seems to be talking to me a lot just lately...

Motherly Love

The sky glowered down on the old house making it seem even more isolated than usual. Situated as it was on the outskirts of Gloucester, behind large hedges, and at the end of a long drive, many people were not even aware of its existence. No telephone lines ran to it and there was no sign of a television aerial on its multifaceted roof. Gardens, once grand, were now an unkempt jungle.

Within the gloomy darkness inside the house, Sara sat, cross legged on her bed, and crooned to her children through pale pink lips. They were crying again. Food was scarce, and they were growing fast. Once they had ceased to be satisfied by her own milk it had been a struggle to find them food to eat. She briefly considered lighting a candle, but although it was quite dark inside the house, she could see perfectly well. Indeed she felt more at home in the dark, and had not really missed the electricity when it had failed. Or more likely, been cut off due to the non payment of bills, since the passing of the father of her children.

Still singing comforting songs to the children, she took a brush from the dressing table and began to apply it to her long black tresses. Her hair shone as it tumbled across her shoulders and full, vermillion tipped breasts. She stood and surveyed herself critically in the full length mirror on the wall. She too had lost weight due to the lack of good food, and although her figure could still be called voluptuous, she could see the signs of the changes that prolonged food deprivation would bring. A mewling cry from one of the children reminded her of the reason for her hunger. Sharing the small amount of food she had managed to obtain with her offspring had left her dangerously short. But as a mother, what could she do?

“Don’t worry, my lovely little babies, Mummy will go and find some food for us to eat.” She sang as she selected clothes from her wardrobe. Then they all froze as the doorbell, silent for so long, rang,

The young representative of the electric company double checked the address on his clipboard, and straightened his tie. For a moment he debated taking his overcoat and umbrella from the car, but decided against it, and with a brief shiver that had as much to do with the eerie atmosphere as the cold, he set off up the drive in the direction of the house.

The doorbell rang with a heartening volume. He hated it when he couldn’t hear whether the doorbell had worked or not. He was never sure whether or not to risk the wrath of the occupants by then knocking. Not a good idea when his main purpose for being there was usually to smooth over some difficulty – real or imagined - and arrange some compromise for bill payments. It always surprised him how often people were afraid to contact the electric company when they had difficulty paying. It really was easier than allowing matters to come to this pass, where the electricity was actually cut off. Often people were so happy to hear a reasonable voice talking through a compromise that he was able to think of himself as some kind of public servant, working for the benefit of the people, instead of the faceless corporation’s debt collector.

His reverie was broken by the door slowly opening, to reveal a young woman, Her long black hair draped around her shoulders and down her back, and her voluptuous figure accentuated rather than covered by a silk robe. Her face, devoid of make up, was pale, with little colour even to her lips, despite their fullness, and he, whilst not considering himself a particularly sensitive person – in this job you couldn’t afford to be – felt he could sense hunger in her eyes.

“I’m terribly sorry to have disturbed you.” He said, in his normal smooth manner. “I’m from the Electric Company. I wanted to talk to you about your electricity supply.”

“I’m sorry, I was just getting ready to go out.” She raised her hand to indicate her face, then swept it down to include her dressing gown. Would you like to come in? I’m afraid I cannot offer you a cup of tea, we’ve no electricity.”

He walked into the hall, waited for her to close the door, and then followed her into the lounge. Despite the gloomy day, enough light was coming in through the windows to show a large room, tastefully decorated, and tidy. It was comfortably furnished, but with a cold dampness about it that spoke of a lack of use. He sat in the chair indicated by her, and retrieved his pen from his inside jacket pocket.

“It’s actually about your electricity supply that I’ve come to see you.” He began, and working half from the memory of countless other calls, and half from the form on his clipboard, began the task of finding out the story of this particular unfortunate who had fallen foul of his employers.

She was a widow, he quickly discovered, left alone by her husband’s sudden demise, and strangely abandoned by society – no benefit, no social security, no insurance payout, no job, just her, the children, and this big old house. Fascinated by someone who could fall so completely through the net in this day and age, he continued to talk and probe. If the house belonged to her, as she suggested, then despite her apparent poverty she would be worth quite a bit. A financial advisor he had worked with before would be happy to help her out of her current difficulty.

Suddenly he looked up and took note of the way she was looking at him. A different hunger now was etched all too clearly in her eyes. He swallowed nervously and looked down again at his form, suddenly devoid of all meaning. He had been in this position before of course, usually with calculating women who thought they could settle their bills on the living room couch, but never had he been regarded with such open lust. He was no Adonis, not even above average in the good looking stakes, and so for someone to look at him in this way was unheard of, unsettling. He stared with intense concentration at the form on his clipboard until the words began to swim into focus once again. His rational mind was already beginning to gloss over the incident. He must have been mistaken. Then, her hand on his shoulder made him jump.

“Come with me.” She whispered, taking his hand.

Unresisting he allowed himself to be led back to the hall, and up a flight of stairs to her darkened bedroom. Even had he been in his normal state of mind he would have been unable to see a thing in the darkness, and he stumbled as he was led across a room alive with strange exotic scents, and filled with a darkness which seemed to crackle with electrical tension. Pulling him towards her into a passion filled kiss, they fell onto the bed. The thought that she could obviously see better in the dark than him, barely registered in his mind, as the fear of falling to an unknown destination mixed with the passion of the kiss to give a jolt of excitement such as he had never before experienced.

Somehow, his clothes seemed almost to remove themselves, so easily did he slide fee of them. She, already naked, slid over his body, covering it with kisses and small bites, before latching on to his lips once more in a smouldering embrace, and then turning them both over so that he lay on top of her, pulling him into her feverishly hot body. As their bodies moved together her kiss became a series of gentle, and not so gentle bites to his lips, face, neck and shoulders. Her bites encouraged him to greater passions and quickly they reached a satisfying and exhausting conclusion.

Only after a few moments recovery time did he begin to feel the pain from his abused flesh. His questing fingers found a strange warm wetness, far thicker and stickier than sweat. Reaching toward the bottom of the bed, he found his trousers, and reaching into the pocket, reclaimed his cigarette lighter. Flicking it into life, he stared in horror at the hand which had investigated his sore shoulder. Red. Covered in thick, sticky red blood.

Twisting his neck, he tried to get a clear look at his shoulder. Was that a chunk of flesh missing from the top of his arm? Certainly the blood was flowing freely and the shoulder itself looked oddly misshapen. As his neck and face too began to burn with pain, a movement caught his eye. Lifting the lighter he peered into the darkness to see, gathered around the bed, eagerly sniffing the air and licking their lips, were the children. With a scream he leapt from the bed, and through the bedroom door. Colliding painfully with the door frame barely slowed him at all, and he was down the stairs and out of the front door before the inhabitants of the house had moved.

Outside, the rain which had threatened for so long finally came, slowly at first, but then larger drops. In the dark of the bedroom Sara chewed the last delicious mouthful with determined enjoyment, ignoring the disgruntled mews of her offspring, wallowing in the sating of both of her hungers at one and the same time. Of course, this was just a small snack, and she would feel hungry again as soon as it was over, but the sacrifice of her own immediate satisfaction was worth it for the greater benefit of the children.

As the rain came down, the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance and she smiled in satisfaction. “Soon Children, soon we shall have meat enough for all of us.” She crooned through blood red lips.

[Twyrch]

The Healing Dream

Thick fog surrounded me as I attempted to get my bearings. Waving a hand in front of my face, I could vaguely make out the image of my hand in front of my face. Moving forward, hands stretched out in front of me, I blindly made my way through the foggy expanse.

Suddenly, I heard a soft growl echoing to the right of where I stood. Cautiously, I made my way toward that sound and found the fog thinning as I moved closer to the sound. The sound moved with me as I traveled, always staying about the same distance from me until I entered a deep forest.

Looking up, the fog formed a ceiling above my head. Behind me, a sheet of gray enveloped my path, leaving no trace of my passing. On either side of me stood tall trees of every kind forming a tunnel, of sorts, that I should follow. There really was only one direction left to me, and that was forward. Warily, I made my way down the tunnel of trees, toward a wolf sitting at the end of the path, growling softly.

Upon reaching the wolf, we stood staring at each other for a moment, before the wolf stood, turns its back on me and walked through a curtain of fog, at the end of the line of trees. Taking a deep breath, I stepped through as well, not knowing what I would find on the other side.

Immediately, brilliant light filled my eyes, temporarily blinding me. I shielded my eyes, squinting against the glare of the sun as my eyes worked to become accustomed to my new surroundings. Once I could see clearly, I looked around in curiosity and wonder. I was standing at the entrance to my sacred grove.

Tranquility settled within me as I took a deep breath, allowing the peacefulness of the grove to touch my soul. I knew that in this space, I was protected from the cares of the world. The wolf, which I had almost forgotten about, growled once again drawing my attention away from the beauty of the grove.

The wolf was standing next to the old log, where I had spent many hours resting and relaxing next to the stream. Suddenly, the wolf turned and jumped across the stream in a single bound, landing softly and on the other side. With a final look over its shoulder, the wolf disappeared into the woods on the other side.

I wondered if it meant for me to follow it into the woods on the other side, but I had never seen that path before and was looking forward to a peaceful rest in my favorite spot within my sacred grove. Settling down, with my back against the log, I closed my eyes and relaxed, allowing all of my worries, fears and frustrations to leave me, if only for a few moments.

A rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs soon pulled me from my gentle rest. I directed my gaze across the stream to the point where the wolf had vanished into the woods, expecting it to return, but to my surprise, a boy and girl stepped out into the light.

I watched the children with intrigue, as they appeared to have been twins, except for the condition of their bodies and clothing. They seemed to be taken directly from the pages of Mark Twain’s story, The Prince and the Pauper.

The boy was filthy, covered in puss-filled sores that oozed down his arms. He was barefoot, wearing tattered clothing and his hair is unkempt. Next to him, the girl was holding his hand. Her appearance was the exact opposite of her twin. She was clean, pure as the new-fallen snow, wearing a beautifully colorful sundress and wearing her hair in pigtails. She didn’t seem to mind the puss flowing over her hand coming from the boy's sores.

I greet them pleasantly, but had a hard time not crying for the sight of the poor boy... wishing there was some way I could help him and wondering why the girl seemed unconcerned about her brother’s physical condition.

“Hello Twyrch”, she said pleasantly. “Why are you so sad?” Her voice was light and had an almost musical quality to it. I wondered how she knew my Druid name and how she knew I had been feeling sad before entering the grove, but decided it would be rude not to respond.

“Hello…” I responded. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s wrong with your brother and why do you let him suffer needlessly?”

As I spoke, the boy looked at me with fear and clung tighter to his sister’s hand, but she seems not to notice. “Because,” she replied gently, “You are the cause of his condition and only you can help him.”

Anger welled up inside of me and I responded harshly, “Me? You accuse me of causing his condition? How dare you! I’ve never met either of you, let alone him and besides, he’s in your care, not mine. Why don’t you help him instead of allowing ignoring his pain?”

She didn’t seem to notice my anger my anger, though, and responded in the same calm, gentle manner as before. “Twyrch, you have spent most of your life hating the person you used to be and that hatred has poisoned your soul. It is this same poison, which now seeps from this boy’s wounds.”

Stunned by her revelation of my secret pain, I asked, “So how can I help this boy?”

“You must simply forgive yourself and stop hating the person you used to be, for it was the experiences in your past which have shaped you into the person you are today.” She explained, “Without those experiences, you wouldn't have the knowledge, wisdom or compassion you have now, and that would be a greater tragedy than if you had never changed at all.”

I sat quietly for a moment, pondering her words. As I waited, she led the boy to the stream. Stretching her hand out across the stream, she said, “Take my hand.”

As if no longer in control of my actions, I did as she asked. She placed the boy's hand in mine, and although I wanted to jerk my hand free, I felt sorry for the boy and couldn’t bear to bring him any more harm.

The boy’s hand was bony and frail, cold as death to the touch. He had a look of pure terror on his face, but never said a word to me. He kept looking from me to the girl, but she calmed his fears saying, “Don’t be afraid. Twyrch won’t hurt you. Just hold onto his hand tightly and step into the stream. I will be here to protect you.”

I climbed into the stream and met him halfway. The water only came up to my waist, but the water came up to the top of his neck. I cupped the water in my hands and poured it over his hands, praying that he would be healed.

Laying her hand on my shoulder, the girl said, “Twyrch, your intentions are good, but you need to do more than that. Place your arm behind his back and tilt him backward until he is fully submerged in the water. Be sure to do this 3 times and continue your prayers.”

Doing as she directed, I placed my arm behind his back and tilted him backward until he was completely submerged, then raised him up again. I did this 3 times, on the third time, I raised him from the water, and he took the girl's hand and stepped out.

His wounds were completely healed, leaving a slight trace of scarring. His clothing had been mended, leaving patched cloth in place of his rags. He looked well nourished and clean, even if he didn't look as nice as the girl did.

I climbed out of the water back to my side of the bank and the boy finally spoke to me. “Thank you, Twyrch, for caring enough about me to tend to my needs, even though you didn’t know me.” Following my gaze, he said, “Ah, I see you’ve noticed the scars on my body and the patches on my clothes. These things will remain with me always, since they made me who I am today, just as the person you were will remain with you always, because it is that person who made you into the man you are today.”

I felt so happy... happier than I'd felt in a long time... I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded and smiled at him. “Goodbye, Twyrch!” They said waving, as they headed back to the woods.

I watched as the boy entered the woods, but the girl stopped and turned toward me, speaking to me one last time. “Remember, Twyrch… What you were and who you will become will always be a part of you. Be happy, for today you have begun a new chapter in your life.”

[Jingle]

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