Sanctuary

“What we need is a great, powerful, tremulous falling back in love with our old, ancient, primordial Beloved, which is the Earth herself.” – Martin Shaw

March of last year brought blossoms and snow flurries and news of change: we were to move, and soon. A brisk, fortunate April wind carried us east to Hellingly, where we landed in a little corner of heaven. We are beginning to take root here.

It’s been a while since my last post. I wrote this poem under the oak tree in our back garden around the recent summer solstice.

Midsummer blessings all x

 

Sanctuary

 

I sat down with Grandmother Oak

there on a blanket she had woven

of clovers and sweet violets

where the fat bees cobble about.

She wrapped me in her scented boughs

and gently held all parts of me –

the flesh, the brittle fragments,

the embers, the salt water and the bone –

with soft and steady breaths she blew

the shadows from my shoulders

and asked only in return of me

that I might be with her a while and,

in ancient, long-forgotten psalms,

that she might sing me home.