Day Four: A month of poetry for Brighid

Visions of Otherworld
II

A slow-meandering breeze rolls past my face
To rustle in my ears a traveling tune.
It sings to me the thrill of letting go
And following where intuition leads

I ponder for a moment what it means
In slow and carefully examined thought.
Its argument exotic presses me
To ascertain how much its worth, or not.

So lost I ruminations stand I there
My legs grow root-like, buried in the ground.
No image moves me while I question it,
No progress made debating what is sound.

The wheat does wave me onward with the wind.
I protest “I do not know; is it safe?”
“You must make risks to learn, must fall to rise,
Or else become a tree, and then a stone.”

I have not time to contemplate the words
For only do they drum upon my ear
When emptying his cheeks upon my back
The Wind does blow me forward off my feet.

So stumbling I throw out my hands and feet
To try and catch myself a hold on ground,
But tumbling ‘spite my efforts I do greet
The earth and roll, world-whirling, from the mound.

My sight still spinning, swirling from the fall,
On stomach sprawled I raise my rumpled gaze
Upon a stately, cloven, blackened hoof
Whose slender sinews stretch toward the sky.

As quickly as appearing it is gone,
Vanished amid the golden stalks of wheat.
Blind instinct urges me to follow on
And swiftly gains firm ground beneath my feet.

I cut through clinking oceans of tall gold,
The shafts of growing metal scratch my cheeks.
A pair of twisted antlers I behold
And try if I can see which way it seeks.

In fixed pursuit my hot feet pound the earth
Till ground gives way beneath my sprinting frame
And into earth I plummet past my waist
And find myself in grubbing rabbit’s hame.

The figure looks at me with knowing eyes,
Full human in their shape and countenance,
No aid they offer, nor no obstacle;
They wink and vanish in the waving wheat.

Already twice I’ve fallen in this land,
And from all paths my chase diverted me.
Now I must lift me up with my two hands,
And find my way through shining lands of sidhe.

Day Three: A month of poetry for Brighid

Visions of Otherworld

I

I tread the rough path ‘twixt two hillocks green.

The air is thick with mist which hangs in sheets

Obscuring vision of the road ahead.

The moisture saturates my every breath

And coats the grass and skin and cloth with dew.

My road leads to twin monoliths of stone

That flank the threshold of another land

Through which my path if e’er I follow leads.

Each menhir a rough pillar of grey rock

Bearing runic symbols of safe passage

Deep notched in channels on each carraig’s face.

Blind to beyond, but trusting in my road

That never once has yet misled my feet

I overstep the boundary of the rocks,

Whose man or elf-marked runes invite me hence,

And pass beyond the portal ‘tween the hills

Into what land as yet remains unseen.

Now is the fog from o’er my eyes removed

And with true vision look I on the land

That stretcheth out before my thoughtful feet.

Below the hillside whereupon I scan,

Behold! A field of gleaming grains of gold;

A flaxen swath of gilded wheat and rye!

Farther thence a sapphire rivulet

Cuts its trickle through that shining land.

Beyond, a forest most majestical

Rises in green pines and hazel trees,

Whose branches overreach the quiet stream,

And trunks the height of which do scratch the sky.

What lessons here be taught I do not know,

But I will walk this world of shining lights,

Of precious metal grains and gemstone leaves,

Of colors strong and trees of soaring heights,

And glean what secrets it presenteth me,

What truths unfathomable it will show.