Imbolc 2013

Imbolc 2013 - a reading (on YouTube)

In darkness we are born of fire. Small souls sparked from the ashes of midwinter. The caress of Brigid's breath coaxes life from cold, dark embers. She sets us on a year-long quest, her inspiration as much a geas as a gift.

By her hearth we are nurtured by harp and fipple flute. Her hall, once rich with drink and song, now marshals its resources until relieved by the forces of spring. Warriors sharpen swords and oil boiled leather. Like mothers preparing to greet as yet unborn children, they plan meet their destiny come snowmelt.

Ours is not given to conquest. Our time is too brief, our works unenduring. Bones are cast and pieces set in motion while shadows linger by the map tracing tendril fingers across the contours of our fate. Thousands of starlings turn and wheel in unison like a cloud of smoke from an extinguished candle suddenly possessed by consciousness and animated into life.

Dawn gathers beyond the window like a thousand candle-bearing angels arriving one by one until a soft, golden glow suffuses the room. And we are set free.

© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III

Summer Solstice 2011

Summer Solstice 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

Sunrise, sunset. The day is here, the day is gone.

Summer and winter are inextricably intertwined. Like mating black snakes in a caduceus, they cross at every solstice. Sunrise on the summer solstice aligns to sunset on the first day of winter, just as summer's sunset lines up with winter's dawn. Between those twin poles, time ambles like the river running from the land of the living to the world of the dead. Its wide, unrippled mirror reflects approaching storms in blue and gray and white.

As I tread along the path beside, a mockingbird marks my passage, scalloping from post to post along a fence, always one step ahead, a taunt or a reminder, of what I am unsure. A woodpecker peers from a keyhole in time-hardened tree trunk, then retreats into its sanctuary. A flutter of crows calls back and forth across a dapple-shaded canopy, harbingers of winter tidings as yet unforeseen. Their dark conversations are as brief as summer showers, all traces evaporate beneath the resurgent sun.

Deep within the faerie wood, dawn belatedly flickers through the leaves concealing the horizon to liberate the sleeping giants from the long, sweet siege of night. The fire-stricken kings crash to their knees, their arboreal crowns shattering as they fall. A host of golden-green usurpers sprout from their sun-dispelled shadows, in want of regents as they strive to reclaim their ancient, ancestral lands.

As I wander from morning toward a deeply shadowed afternoon, time creeps forward on padded feet, unnoticed, like vines entwined across a brushfire clearing, like grass subduing the stain a midden mound or a cemetery hill, until it gently covers all.

Sunrise, sunset. The day is here, the night is come.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Spring Equinox 2011

Spring Equinox 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

A crow sits atop a signpost, harbinger of the naked power grab occurring in the springtide court. His companion drinks from a muddy, roadside pool. On bolder days, he station-keeps in midair beyond the light pole, battling a strong south wind to a standstill. He tucks his wings, hovers and peels off back to perch before stepping into the wind again. Nearby, his mate calls her prophetically phrased monitions.

No one pays attention to her harshly worded warnings. The madding mob prefers the melodic cooing of mourning doves or onomatopoetic calls of the whippoorwills crying through the night, not recognizing the ominous note of either. Now is the time of the green plague. The last of the old, brown leaves have been discarded, pushed out by the green and new. An orgy of pollen sows confusion through the land. With each unrelenting gust of wind, golden storm clouds gather beneath every oak and pine.

A hawk glides low and silent through the front garden, a dead dove clutched in its talons. As her raptor-sisters patrol above, a woodpecker circles a tree as a shield then abandons her half-constructed nesting hole to return when the skies are clearer. Garden predators prowl unhindered in a triple-witching of instinct, occupation and feigned domestication. Quick, sharp claws lurk beneath their soft gray paws.

At night, two steady stars like uneven eyes, one heavy-lidded, peer back from the dark horizon. The old god and his messenger steal glimpses of their former demesne. The aged face of the winter solstice melts away as her younger sister begins to blossom. Soon, too, her shine will fade and we will flee back into the arms of her jealous, pale white twin. By then, the summer sacrifices will have been gathered, stirring restlessly within the wicker man, certain of their fate.

Behind a screen of purple Persian shields, azaleas bloom pink and white and red. Lavender lantana pop in tiny clusters that form a fuller flower, crawling down the stalks like tiny Roman legions whose whole is accentuated by the congregated discipline of its parts. The first brace of yellow alamanda trumpets the coronation of the radiant maiden-princess who has finally overthrown the cruel ice queen. By Lughnasa, they will blast martial in oppression as she, too, will be named a tyrant and usurper.

Camped in their winter bivouacs before the spring campaign, her green-jacked soldiers share cold coffee and dream of returning home to kiss their wives goodbye. Ignorant that they'll end their days blind and toothless, they still believe their cause is just and their vengeance justified. Until the scales of war tumble from their eyes, they dose in the warmth of the maiden's brilliant smile, blinded by visions of her fast maturing beauty, praying that her brightly colored revolution will never meet its end.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Imbolc 2011

Imbolc 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

At Imbolc, the Iron Queen remains enthroned in the underworld. In the world of men, the Corn Mother's grief casts a pale pall across the land. Pure, white, sparkling tears drift softly down her face, clinging to the ground as a memorial as her desperate search continues. The frozen landscape mirrors her lamentation. She wanders the wood instead of fertile fields. Bare branches form the lacework of her mourning veil.

Perched like slices of a moonless night among the barren trees, a chorus of crows cruelly cries a coronach for the Rape of Prosperina. In their underground lairs, bears and badgers stir, presaging her triumphal return. Until that hallowed day, harts shelter in sylvan glades and glens, their flanks turned against her mother's chilling wails of gloom. Coyotes prowl the gardens unhindered, leaving only pawprints in the snow.

In secret passageways beneath the earth, a chthonic entourage awakens. Sprites and faeries don chartreuse and silver to celebrate the return to light of the Majestic Queen of Shades. Her remaining curses will go undelivered until Samhain. For a short, bright season, the dead rest peacefully in their graves.

Soon her runners will spring forth, scattering crocuses and snowdrops along her processional, carpeting it imperial and virgin white. Little do they know her innocence is no longer Orphean, forever stained by Eurydice's blood.

In the valleys of Goidelic mountains, deep among the holly and the yew, Green Men laugh as the petty, deific drama plays out again this year. In the fields and folds and sheltered byres, young mothers pay no mind. Their lambs dance and kick within warm, winter wombs, dreaming of the verdant, Elysian fields that will greet them when they emerge.

Huddled in mead halls, young warriors while away the winter days honing weapons to an icy sheen against the impending thaw. While dozing by the fire, old men harvest memories of long lost maidens like poppies entangled with the barley in the fall.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Lughnasa 2009

Lughnasa 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

Lughnasa. English Lammas. The sun slowly fades from its solstice peak. Its journey is like a river; the water constant in its swirling, only the landscape changing as it slides by and day follows day.

The first day of harvest dawns with soft, shadowless, silver light creeping through the windows. By the river, a low furnace burns among the trees whose leaves dance a pantomime against the silver-orange light that forges another smoky dawn.

The spirits of the neighborhood gather to accept the offering of Lammas bread I lay before them, a small sacrifice to the guardians of this suburban demesne. With fluttering wings and fanned tails, young blues dance a ritual challenge against the reds, duns and grays for control of the unending seed. A red-shouldered juvenile frolics in the morning sun, chasing fallen pine needles before clutching one as a prize as it ascends to an oaken perch.

As I turn toward the water's edge, the summer sun embraces me like a lover long away, the humidity crushing all the breath from my chest. Nestled among the sage in this sere and shattered season, a lone purple blossom recalls an ancient rain song with an echo of storms to come.

The river is a still, black mirror marred only by a patchwork stain of lily pads, reflecting the cypress knees that tremble from supporting a dark green canopy of sky. Islands of tall, straight pines scattered across a green sea of pasture form the only topography along this stretch of watery highway.

Lightning skitters and shies along the horizon as cloud bottoms blur, merging sky with sea. Closer now, the lightning dances among the clouds, flashing their petticoats as distant elders grumble their disapproval at the provocative display. As the rain sheets down, the voice of the river rises from a hoarse whisper to a thunderous roar proclaiming its rebirth.

The edges of the world become as sharp as shattered crystal in the sterling twilight that follows the landscape cleansing rain. As night descends, the moon plays hide and seek among the clouds, its light occasionally spilling onto the water like heavy cream overflowing a large pewter pitcher.

By the equinox, thousands of migratory birds will form intricate line drawings of shallow waves cresting upon the river's wide and sandy shores. On a bluff overlooking the water, a mound of stones creates a low, dark chamber with a narrow passage leading in from outside, a cold womb where the dead are reborn from within. Towering trees guard these ancient ruins where gods once wept. Only blind men dwell there now, unscathed by its fallen beauty.

Each year wends along its own journey. Some happily burble while others crash and tumble over cataracts. A few become silent mirrors upon which we can reflect, with no two images looking exactly the same. Enjoy the journey, wherever it may take you. The river might not pass this way again.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Imbolc 2009

Imbolc 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

Today is Imbolc, the first day of the Celtic spring.

Each year I've used that line, I've been greeted with rolling eyes and gentle laughter. "Where I live, spring is still many weeks away."

I think that is the difference between the Celts and the Christians who co-opted their festivals. The Celts saw two distinct signs of spring today. They saw the light had returned to the level it was at Samhain (All Hollow's Eve). They saw the ewes lactating, a sure sign that lambs were on the way. Their traditions survive from the cold and desolate places where they lived, Ireland, Wales, Scotland.

Theirs wasn't a Nordic cold. The Norse didn't have much use for a goddess of poetry anyway. Winter for them was a time for sharpening weapons and preparing the longboats to launch once the thaw came while the skalds inspired them with the sagas. An egalitarian people, they didn't discriminate on whose lands they raided, on whose books they liked to eat.

The Celts were more in tune with nature than our Christian ancestors. In Christianity, today is the Feast of Candlemas, the Purification of the Virgin. Where the Celts focused on the quality of light outside, I think the Christians saw only darkness, saw only another day to burn candles against the pagan night. Some see seeds, where others see only soil.

Here, a bright yellow fog of pine pollen drifts in front of the windows with every gust of wind. Soon, that wind will turn amber-brown as the oaks join their cousins' arboreal fertility rite. Brigid's flame sparks the red unfolding in the new leaves of the maples, and fans the yellow-orange embers dying in the oaks. Fallen leaves reflect the sun like so many water droplets splashed across the road, like so many tiny candles strewn across the lawn. Crepe myrtles wander naked through the landscape, their limbs barren of all but last year's empty husks.

Cardinals dot the branches, vibrant reminders of the season just begun. They disguise themselves among the hibiscus, sheltering near solitary blossoms. Orange honeysuckle lift their trumpets toward the sky, the first flowers of a coming symphony. Azalea's pop with recently forgotten colors, purples, pinks and reds.

Eagles and osprey call their mates to nest. They return to the same haunts year after year, latticeworks overlooking the rich hunting of a tidal basin, pines towering above the stone-strewn field of human dead. Soon their nests will blossom with young in ones and twos like the wildflowers dotting the lake shores their parents hunt. Young heads will cry for life to feed their insatiable hunger, their need to see a future as bright with promise as their piercing eyes.

I hope today you will turn your own eyes toward the horizon and search for the subtle omens that spring is on its way. Like the alpine flowers whose blossoms burst through snow, the signs are there for those who unchain their blinders, and choose clarity over night.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Summer Solsitce 2008

Bright red cardinals engage gray and white mockingbirds in a territorial war, each flicking from tree to wire, singing out their borders with madrigals of battle. A colony of jays erupts in a riot of shrieking blue until a vestal white egret stalks innocently from their lair. Ospreys haunt an aerial highway concealed below a canopy of adjacent trees and homes as they hunt the margins between more bountiful lakes. A dusky heron stands in water as still as the reeds concealing him while fingerling fish dart between his legs unaware of the danger until his yellow bill flashes like lightning from a clear, blue sky.

An opalescent halo shines through brush-stroke clouds, masking yet defining the sun reflected on the water like a sheet of hammered gold, lighting the hazy horizon like a candle in the fog. As the neon mist disperses, the sun sets a bush ablaze in the spaces between its leaves, like an omen or promise. Or a voice.

The full moon precedes the solstice by two full nights, a waning prophecy diffusing the shadows with its soft, continuous light.

A night breeze climbs a spider strand in a shaft of reflected light, like a violin being tuned to the perfect pitch of the starry sky. A tandem of creeping meteors tracks across the darkness, watchfires from distant outposts, flickering reminders that our farthest colonies remain intact.

A pair of crows disrupts the moonlight, the precursors to a murder, large, indigo and iridescent. One splashes in the stone basin while her mate picks at the lavender flowers of the myrtle to which it's chained. Thought and Memory, All Father's ever present eyes and ears, taunting me, laughing at my troubles. I echo their laughter back at them, the mingled sound of joy combating the sorrows of this life.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Beltane 2008

A spot of light in one corner of the window oozes across the bone white curtains, staining them the color of liquid honey. Amber slowly pales to sunshine yellow then to white before it fades into dappled gray as it hides behind the bright green veil of spring.

Sunset bracketed by folded wings with filigrees of light, traceries of cloud, like Icarus descending in fire behind a copse of trees, burning against their matchstick shadows, observed only because it's partially obscured.

Herons and egrets lazily chase sunrise then sunset in silhouette. Do they notice the beauty beyond their destination on these daily migrations? Or do they, like us, transit the sky blindly, thinking only of work and home, past and future, never truly living in the present?

Beltane, the pastoral transition from spring leas to summer grazing. Tonight, we light the purifying bonfires in a ritual celebrating our survival through the spring. The flames flicker across still pools of night, encouraging the rebirth of our dead. As numerous as fireflies on a summer's eve, their souls are like tiny echoes of the distant fires reflected in the water, waiting only for us to light the candles that eventually will guide them home.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Vernal Equinox 2008

A green haze envelops otherwise bare branches like sea fog clinging to the high-rises across the causeway, obscuring all but their outlines against a leaden sky. Clouds of pollen explode with each gust of wind, staining all it touches a stone-ground mustard. Older oaks shed piles brown and ropey flowers in favor of the bright green garments of their rebirth. Red maples bank their scarlet flames in favor of a cooler, coppery patina as the next generation of leaves unfold. Pine needles emerge in deep green clusters arranged like the fine brushstrokes of fur across a cat's face.

Puffs of dandelion ride the wind to fertile lodgings far from their ancestral homes. Tiny wasps dip and weave as they seek shelter from the storms of air between plentiful snacks of nectar. Crows battle headwinds to a standstill before turning their wings and returning to the destination of their departure.

As the wind quiets, cardinals share kisses in the naked myrtle after he offers her delicacies of seed. Blue swarms of jays with sunflower prizes flutter and hop among the dun bones of skeletal oaks. Squirrels climb and cling to the bare, tan trunk that supports the ceramic pool from which they drink while contorted like yoga masters setting a careful watch for the tiny panther that prowls their domain. Chattering a warning to brethren who scramble to safety, they scold their adversary as if victorious in a child's game of hide and seek. Their taunts turn to mourning the day he wins a round, a limp trophy swaying in his jaws as he retreats to the kingdom from which he came.

Below the drama, one lame dove with a club foot bobs across the yard, pecking up scraps cast down by her rivals, reminding me that spring sustains even the damaged among us as we struggle to overcome our limitations, sometimes flying where we cannot run.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Horizons

Hand in hand on the low, green point, we watch another day, another season, another year pass beyond the water to the west. As we await rebirth, we contemplate the skyline, the transition and the night. Where were we a year ago? Where will we be tomorrow? A tangled web of clouds lies clotted high in the fading light, a reflection of our unspoken thoughts.

Above the lake, a ribbon of crows swirls and flutters from horizon to horizon, mocking the darkness they fly before. A few double back into eddies, vortices of a dozen birds, before rejoining the stream meandering north and west as if defying the gravity of the flat, featureless plain below. Harbingers or prophecies, they will return at daybreak, leaving other birds to divine the night.

Mountains of fog loom against the horizon like a distant, shadowed ridgeline, gray silhouettes dividing a world of darkness from light.

Sunlight glints off a cloud edge like the thin blade of a bronze knife then sets the clouds smoldering like a wildfire sparked on the horizon. Molten gold pours through a skin of clouds cracked and fissured like crazed porcelain revealing the base, white earth beneath.

Behind the bank of broken fog a golden landscape lies half concealed. Soft, lighted hills and twinkling marshes bracket a glowing river winding toward a shining city in the distance with jeweled spires surrounding a central dome. A vision too bright to gaze upon for long, the vision of an afterlife. An instant of crystalline clarity before the vision fades in the afterglow, graying first to charcoal then to black. The afterimage is burned into our minds, returning like the nightingale whose songs will haunt our dreams.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Winter Solstice 2007

The day begins with morning sun slanting through a mist reminiscent of a fine, silver snow falling across the neighbor's lawn. The light has drifted south into a notch between the houses before filtering through the oaks which jealously clutch their leaves until spring. The evening promises to be humid, the air thick, penetrating and chill. The sun reflects off a dampened driveway that could be coated with ice, setting fire to a normally shadowed corner of the room.

Behind the house, snowbird starlings perch atop the power lines wing to wing, slowly nudging each other out from the center. First one, then another seeks a more prestigious position that chases down the line like the ripples of a rumor. At the end, the least becomes first as he circles below and sends another murmur of a conversation through his lesser peers. One line down, the final outcast takes wing which startles the flock into flight. They spring to the air as one, wheeling across the sky, their shadows by the hundreds speckling the grass like the shade of a thick-trunked maple on a windy day. After a time they resettle, content for a moment until one covets his neighbor's place and the jostling begins again.

The winter solstice is our high holiday. For us, the day is elemental, composed of fire and water, earth and air, and spirit. Candles throw back the darkness of our troubles. The lake reflects the sunset as we reflect upon the year. The stone out front stands only slightly more weathered like a sentinel and reminder. The wind echoes our transgressions and whispers its forgiveness. We fill our glasses with a measure of each, the mixture reawakening our souls after their long slumber, healing any damage like a balm.

Like the starlings, we observe rituals that onlookers may not always understand as we send forth our desire for a better year ahead. Such wishes are the gifts we sometimes share with others, wisps of parchment fitted into the cracks of a wall, stones thrown at a pillar to beat back temptation, lights floated down a river to wash away our sins, votives flickering in a nave in remembrance of our dead. Symbols and ceremonies that fill the emptiness we sometimes feel, reminding us that we're human. In community or solitude, such prayers populate this longest night. Like the constellations and wandering stars, together they are bright enough to guide us once we let our eyes adjust, like the lone lamp upon our stove burning through the night.

Whatever the light that guides you on your winter celebrations, we hope that it, like your Solstice, remains warm and bright.


© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Journeys over Water

We travel from our troubles toward a place of greater safety, a sanctuary if only for a day. Three times we cross the water at midday, three times we return at twilight. Six passages that echo like a spell of initiation gaining power as its mantra is repeated. Six shining swords of motion we now carry that resonate with magic each time we climb the stone hill arching above the bay.

A sparkling road across a deep blue field intersects our path, leading directly toward the sun. Before us, clouds trailing mist lighten the azure of the sky to aqua in their wake, though the illusion of their rain is dispelled long before the ground. Below, a spider web of lines anchors the fishing pier to the water.

Rafts of terns drift idly across the bay. Cormorants are stacked in a precise pecking order on the crossbars of a ranging tower. Open formations of pelicans glide just above the wave tops, their wingtips brushing the water, leaving a trail of ripples as if from a line of isolated showers. Ospreys sit sentinel atop the light poles that line the causeway like columns crowned with slowly blinking gargoyles whose heads swivel to eye us as we pass.

On the far shore, gray-bearded oaks witness our approach over an alien landscape their children will never visit while crows gossip across the sky, rumoring our arrival.

With our departure, distant clouds focus the setting sun into an orange-white blaze as they transit the horizon like distant mariners manning crystal ships that sail above the sea. Inland, a pillar of glass and steel captures the sun and is transformed into a burning beacon of divine providence or an omen of its impending wrath. The finger of flame fades as we slowly descend toward home, leaving us unscathed.

The sun now set, the turquoise mirror of the water reflects the pinks and lavender-grays of the approaching evening that marks an end to our adventures. Returning to familiar ground, we prepare to move the cycle forward into a better year ahead, the difficulty of the journey now behind us.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Morning in Another Light

Sunlight pours through the front window from a crucible of molten copper, as dark and richly thick as tupelo honey spilling across the white linen tablecloth then oozing to the floor, staining the carpet just an instant before it's gone.

As the morning cools to the palest orange sherbet, a faint breeze dusts the walk with a lavender snow from the myrtles finally come into bloom. Above, an aura bees on golden wings flash and dance around each cluster as they delicately sample the bouquet like connoisseurs at a wine tasting.

Sunrise warms to lemon-lime. Jays and cardinals conduct a war of blue and scarlet at the feeder, each side's young fluttering their encouragement as they await the feast that surely follows their parents' victory. Beyond, a lone, red hibiscus stands sentinel against the wall of green, watching from the shadows.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III