A Conversation at the Threshold

The landscape rises from my dreams
My bones hold all its memories –
The stories of that hallowed ground
Which tell of times full with the sound –
of creaking limb and leaf-caught breeze
In places where there once were trees.

But grief has no place in the birth
of ancient living fecund earth
The fescues, oat grass, and the sedge
In breezes blow, and mark the edge
Where Nature here refuses dearth
and fire still brings to every hearth.

Tenacious are the bog and glen.
Tenacious is the fair mountain.
The shroud of mist that covers all
Is like the vail that here did fall
When the cross brought with its reign
The fear of magic amongst men.

Magic is the world in bloom,
When Spring rises, not from a tomb,
But from the winter-frozen ground,
And featherlings in nests resound.
The magic is the Earth’s great womb
Responding to the birthing tune.

And who this birthing tune doth play?
Forget ye not, ’tis but the Fay.
Forgetting bides because of fear
Designed to rent a baleful tear
Between the worlds, to keep at bay
The friendship of the magic way.

A friendship and a reverence
That holds in delicate balance
Not some survival strategy,
But living possibility.
The heartbeat of the Earth’s cadence –
A universe-expanding dance.

The cross has all our dreamings spent.
The uilleann pipes play but lament.
We have had enough of loss,
And war, and carrying the cross.
My daughter, take what has been rent
The fabric of the worlds now mend.

Take the heather and the yew,
Sew them with the meadow dew.
Friendships make on every ground.
This world is to all worlds bound
All these gifts alive in you
The bard, diviner, drum-beat, too.

None of this has ever died
Because you are alive, alive.
None of this will ever die,
Because you are alive, alive.
We are all in you – alive.

by Purple Hazel Green, March 2015