Kwannon
Avalon
Below the mountain, the bedrock.
In the lake’s eye, the mystery.
Avalon is made by women,
woven of the truth behind myth
before the first apples took root.
A grand weaving, a living thing
threaded with the black soil, the midnight
depths of our soul’s work, those long nights
of sweat and wonder. Red of blood
and apples, our mothers’ memories,
the white of starlight and cloud, owl wings
and bone. It spans a work too great
for one woman’s hands, so we weave
it together and plant the five seeds
in the Mother’s earth, we who are
Her daughters and priestesses here,
at the center, the core of being.
We weave alone and together,
and share our breath to spark the cauldron.
Avalon is made by women,
those Nine who fetched fallen Arthur home
and we, too, doing Her work of leaf
and mist, stone and sweat, that which sustains
the three wheeling realms and that which calls
our sisters, all our sisters, home.
The Mist
Sister, watch the mist rise from the cooling lake,
the clouds emerging from the waters one by one.
Like cloaked women, they rise and walk across
to land, their veils billowing after them
hiding the shore from us, hiding us from the shore.
So frail that barrier: a hand passes through it,
a face framed by dew-soaked hair, slick by the touch
of mystery. Here we stand unmolested,
thanks to the courtesies of mist. No hard eye
pries the prize from us. No hard word reprimands.
This space, this ensorcelled circle of mist, lit
with its own star that darkness never steals.
Silence is a language, moving in slow ripples
from the edge of our vision to our feet
to the world’s rim, to the unseen spindle of stars.
Safeguarded in mist, yet here we see clearly:
Every line on your face, written with the grace
of your life. They are not my words to utter,
those starling words, but I am eager to listen.
We open, night-blooming flowers in still air,
and follow the path through the orchard. With each step,
the dream takes shape until the veil shreds: a tree trunk,
the glimmer of a firefly, the first summer stars,
the hum of a great music. My hands know how
to play it, my mouth still learning its shape.
The Gift
You know the image: the weathered-face man, squinting
in the sun, the vast plains opening their blank page
to his writing. A homestead, maybe some horses,
always a fence. Self-created, like the god
and his word. Sweat and land provide everything.
The women know differently. To grow the apple
takes black dirt and years, seasons and rain, and yes,
a fence for deer in the sapling’s tender years.
The diligence of bees, a parade of bright days,
the wild generosity of land, sea and sky
lavished unstinting, a queenly gift. Don’t forget
those final, necessary components: patience, sweat,
the aching arms digging a hole for the roots.
We have what we need, but we only have it
together, when we are generous with our gifts,
when the weak arm is braced by the strong. He never built
by himself, that self-made god. The timbers came
from somewhere, and the horses. The plains spread their quilt
only after the glaciers chose to relent.
The self, by itself, is never sufficient.
Here, sister. I will trade you a song for an apple,
you will give us the seeds for our mutual joy.
Our heads leaning close, we read the book of wonder,
each hand turning a page as the horses run free
and the owl swoops over a plain of flowers.
The NineThe Nine came to bear his broken body back,
to heal in tandem with the war-scorched earth.
Bowed by his betrayals and his wounds, he falls
out of the story then: only a boat
bearing westward, only a promise to return.
Cloaked and proud, they disappear into the mist.
We are left to assume that the king has died,
the promise spun of myth and fog to sate
our souls, thirsty with the dust of history.
But the water holds memory with its weight
the ripples form a road for those who find it.
And there on the farthest shore, the apple blooms
and bears, withers and rots in an endless moment.
We find this isle where nine sisters gather,
or nine stones, nine trees, nine geese winging the sky
with wild songs. Press your palm to the hillside,
the rounded breast of earth. They gather you in,
beloved one, hands cool as moonlight, practiced like
the best of physicians. Not only kings may find
respite here. Your eyes drift shut, petals falling.
Your eyes drift shut, as the arborists piece
the green of you back together, as weavers
with deft hands stitch the pattern back to form,
taproot sunk deep, the twigs reaching high. Whisper
the Nine as you drift in dream: You will return.
The Sight
Brew it with the vervain, the purple-flowered
nepenthe. Add a silver coin, a shining disc
of moonstone. Either will do. Unsheath your intent.
Gather the moon’s light, the stones, the shadowed sky,
then sit and watch the mist rise through half-closed eyes.
The sight will come to you then, the gray smoke rising
from the bowl. Or stumble closed-eyes to the doorposts
and then unveil the sun of vision. The first thing
you see is the answer. Listen to the breeze
whispering its knowledge through the aspen leaves
or regard the passage of ravens in the book
of the sky. Sometimes the fire sings its answer,
sometimes the rocks, the crack in the shoulder blade,
a deck of playing cards. She speaks through symbols
and dream, but only to the listeners
so listen, listen close. In that waiting space
our nine breaths warm the waters, clarity
of sight, the gift of our life and time, the gift
of our visioning. The waters in the bowl
of the purple-flowered nepenthe, silver coin
and moon, the mist weaving its shapes on the loom
of our vision. Speak to us, water and flame,
oak leaf and broom flower, hillock and wheel of stars.
We clambered up to see a wonder. She speaks
only to listeners, so listen close.
The Order
We start with the violet sky as the light sinks
beyond the rim, when the last withered leaves
fall to the newly barren earth, when the moon
begins to diminish. Is it strange that night
is the mother of morning, that birth begins
with a long dying? Bathe in the midnight pool
under the cold stars, evergreen boughs crowned
with snow. So dark you can barely see your hand
before your eye, much less the road. Here is where
the seed sprouts, hidden in that moonless soil
until the first leaf reaches for the dawn’s
crocus light, the first slim hint of a moon
bespeaking the end of our fast, the swelling
into promise. Lovers join, unfolding petals,
fresh as wind, the rushing of the sap through us.
And then the fullness which is our ending,
the apple we devour down to the seeds,
the heavy blue of evening. The egg cracks.
A delicate life lurches out, hardens,
and so begets its death right there in the nest.
These wheels situate us in time, a round dance
linked one to the other: the sun, the moon,
the spawning of tides and seasons, and the ebb
that reveals the history on the sea floor,
the music of ourselves, the stops and the sound.
The Ethos
Oh sister, when the fruit drops from the stem
do you snatch it for yourself? Does the moon
refuse to rise from the dark well of her
waning and thus have us stumble through night’s
black ink? Does the sun shrug and turn away?
We partake of all the same elements:
The salt of tears and the clamorous waves,
the iron tang of blood and mountain stone,
bones built of the same chalk as the scallop,
our nails the shining bodies of insects,
our hair ruffed mane and flight-feathers. We walk
under the same sun, the same moon. We share
the silver wheel of the stars, the magic
of will and making, of spells and the mind
that weaves them. We share all things in common
whether we seal our eyes to it, or seek
to hoard them in a cave. Gifts are wrapped in
responsibilities, the spiral shell
around the tender snail. The center
all stillness amid the whirl, the spindle
that weaves our priestess cloak by our choices.
We die: This is an immutable fact
that stretches us thin, the heart of tenderness.
We are all of a kind. Let us be kith,
pooling our knowledge to make the world whole.
The Message
We wrote it on the water, in the wisps
of smoke from a fire of nine woods. We wrote it
in the branches, in the roots. Our breath the page,
our will the ink, we wrote it in the flight
of birds. Watch them flock and soar out to the west.
But the river floods and silt buries the house.
The birds have migrated elsewhere. Hard axes
razed the trees and no one counted which woods
went into the blaze. Your nails rake the earth
for our memories, for any trace of us
who have gone before. But listen close: we
are encoded in the very words you speak.
You’re gathering the nine specific branches
and sweating over the fire drill as you
relight the sacred flame on the hilltop.
The flower-bride and the owl is there, the cloud-wife
of the hungry earth. The divine mare, the furrow,
the great queen is there. The silver wheel who is
the river, white cow and the hazel’s sweet meat.
The shadow, the shifter, raven and eel,
greyhound and otter, hawk and hen, oh yes,
she is there now. And the flame’s white raven,
she who rises up from the stones and lights
the fire in the head. The birds are flying east.
The white raven leads them to you now, to home.
Immram
You don’t stay on the island, behind the wall
of mist. Does the seed stay with the blossom
or does it cast forth on the sea, finding
new lands to root and bloom? Every sapling
an adventurer and so are you, sister.
You are always coming home and always
departing. Every breath a boat, carrying
you across the wave. Close your eyes: You’re in
the orchard now, not in dream but in truth.
Open them, and here you will plant the new trees,
here you will build Avalon twig by twig
in a grassy field, a desert, an empty
lot, a dirty kitchen, a place just waiting
for your hand and your devotion. Part the mists
and step through, sister: You are never alone
in this work, never far from the land beyond
the wave, no matter how far the ocean heaves,
how changed the landscape, how taut the thread of time.
Dreams are enough when you combine them with
doing. They are the frame for our weaving,
the vision we make real with art and clever
hands, with words and a shake of bells. The moon
is waxing and watching, waiting and waning.
The seeds in your palm, ready to be planted.
Sister, make yourself a doorway and walk through.
