Winds of Spring

I listen to the wind, to the wind, to the wind I listen to the wind, as it howls, as it sings I listen to the wind, to the wind, to the wind I listen to the wind, as it hums, as it stings.

I listen to the wind, when chaos does abound and bade me, fiercely, commands me to run and descend into and down underground.

Down past the roar and the rattle and the tales I descend underground, morphing slowly Brown Bear tail.

I descend and arrive, leaving movement behind, in the dirt and the earth and all at once at a great hidden hearth.

A fire, a silence, an echo from above, that which sent me underground into silence, into love.

I still hear her song, her high tone and her whine, her song in my heart I hold dear for all time.

Time is not short, down here under rock, and past earthen walls on a small wooden door do I knock.

Once, twice, thrice, I’m beckoned, she’s called, and I enter deep darkness through rapid free fall.

To enter a chamber beyond chambers, beyond earth, this is where I meet old hag lday of forgotten earth.

Mottled and rancid yet pure and true, I’m observed yet not seen, barely am I even spoken to.

For hag lady, she’s busy, slowly stirring a pot full of black cauldron magic, full of bones and flesh rot.

What’s cooking? I ask yet she answers me not for she’s slowly breaking apart a great, rotten lot.

Then slowly, head rises, her eyes come to meet me and I know that it’s you, my love, there in deep cauldrons pot.

And my heart it feels full, surely fit to burst open I’m sure, and it does and then blood splatters it splatters all over the floor.

And hag lady laughs, oh she laughs with keen glee, she cries More! she cries More! and in my blood I drown.

Drowned I now fall to the floor, I am no longer stuck, I am free of this life and then, then you rise, you rise in the steam from bubbles and rot, and you rise and you scream forgotten, you’d thought.

New yet ancient as stone the bones from which you’re made come from myself, long line of women, alone.

The hag settles in silence and bade me quietly farewell, then I pad my way back through passages and tunnels and great big doorways, til I reach the hearth that was once full of fire and was covered in bones.

Here we rest, not yet ready to venture back above but Wind, she does beckon gently, do you hear her, my love?

So now here alone, yet all here together, we brace against the wind, and ascend back to the weather.

Image: The Princess and the Bear, John Bauer.

#Crone #Spring #poem #Mythology #Hag #Pagan #womenswork