Beltane 2013

Beltane 2013 - a reading (on YouTube)

The season starts with a slaughter, ripened lives plucked in bunches like fresh strawberries until red runnels indelibly stain the hands of the gods. His winged companions ambushed by forces of light and darkness, mighty Oberon slouches upon his throne, lord of a silent kingdom. Tiny chimes give voice to the restless air as belled and chained faeries sing for Beltane to set them free.

A host of faeries disguised as dragonflies flit and flitter among the clouds of insects that serenade the river flowing through glen. Sunlight glints off their armor beneath tabards of lavender, pink and yellow fluttering like an army of wildflowers celebrating the wind. Beneath a banner bright as shamrock, they pluck harp strings spun from daffodils and beat a war drum purple with a pair of thistle heads.

With crystal swords and pinfeather arrows, they prepare for battle, arrayed against the storm of winter's final, desperate cold defense. As pipers call a dancing tune, the army surges forward, a cacophony of color sprouting in its wake as each rapier pinprick melts another foe. Horns of honey wine and nectar overflow in victory as the ice queen retreats into a babbling brook and the snow queen melts to May. 

© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III

Fall Equinox 2011

Fall Equinox - a reading (on YouTube)

At the equinox the morning light changes from summer to winter, soft, slanted and slightly shadowed. Yet deep within our concrete canyons and tamed suburban jungles, we still dream our lives away.

The white faerie stirs her cauldron beneath the Harvest Moon as blind men feed the fire that keeps the brew alive. Each lanced boil of inspiration shrouds the world in deeper poetic mystery. She reads from the Black Book Carmarthen and lulls our souls to sleep.

Adrift in her hypnagogic fog, we shout garbled messages between our ship and shore. We strain to hear the crash of waves, praying we are guided toward safe harbor rather than lured by will-o-the-wisps onto a rocky shoal.

In the parkland beyond the breakwater, trees uproot to walk and fight as men, their arms barren as their leafy armor falls away. Winter's breath strips their flesh, revealing narrow limbs that beckon like long, bony fingers in the shadows of the moon.

Along the path within that rocky wood, we find a polished pewter mirror, its surface reflecting an ever shifting triad of maiden, mother and crone. As the wind penetrates the forest, the stagnant pool ripples to life. Tiny waves of black and gray reflect the sky above. Fey voices whisper from the shadows, drink not deeply from the roadside pool. In raindrops there are wisdom, in draughts a fatal poison.

Overhead, the sky looms like scales on the belly of a great, gray snake dripping clear venom directly into the minds of its victims below. Come morning, its tears turn to shafts of silver light that pierce the Cimmerian clouds, a rain of arrows from heaven, a storm of spears from the afterlife.

We awake to find another year and a day behind us, our memories stolen by a mischievous boy who somehow infected the enchantress' womb. His contralto words echo from the dreamscape like tiny, silver bells, beautiful yet incomprehensible. We can only hope to gather them like the first fruits of the harvest, quickly capturing their luminescence before our ink darkens upon the page.

Such is the gift of Ceridwen's inspiration at the equinox, fleeting and evanescent. Enjoy her magic before the memory fades like the gloaming astride midsummer's piercing light and the deep darkness of midwinter.

© 2011 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

Beltane 2011

Beltane 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

The White Witch has been deposed. The Green Witch has been resurrected.

At Samhain, the Frost Queen passed annual judgment against her twin and rival after usurping power at the autumnal court. The Green Witch was garroted and minced, her body cast like feed-corn across the dry and dusty fields. In the overwatching wood, oaks and maples bled in mourning. Beneath the oppressive blanket of her icy enemy, her seeds lay fallow all winter. Like a mother spider to her emerging brood, she prepares herself for the ultimate maternal sacrifice come spring, when in revenge of Medea's children, her hatchlings will devour her alive.

Each crystalline defection from the Ice Queen's occupation waters the seeds of the Green Lady's discontent, first by drips and drops then in a steady stream. The Snow Queen's alpine army melts away before the steadily advancing wall of green. At Imbolc, there was an uprising. At the equinox, a revolution. By Beltane, the ritual plunder of the White Witch's final strongholds had begun. As the last green jacked messenger arrives, the Sun Queen's court erupts into an orgy of colorful celebration.

Reborn in coldspring snowmelt, emerging from her donjon tower, the verdant maiden blushes pink and rose before the encircling soldiers of spring. Bees and wasps in black and yellow tabards, their lances sharp and shining, stand watch while common workers deflower her in turns. By Lughnasa, she will once again be heavy with child. In the wickerman at Samhain, she will be sentenced to her fate. Her ash and sackcloth remnants will be sown throughout the land. To once again lay dormant, awaiting Imbolc and the Equinox.

When the White Witch will be deposed, and the Green Witch resurrected.

© 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

Fall Equinox 2010

Fall Equinox 2010 - a reading (on YouTube)

The day dawns on a knife's edge, white light at right angles, reflected soft yet sharp and flinty. All the rose and gold is gone. The world is torn in opposite directions by two equally powerful horses, one white, one black, summer and winter, hope and despair. Within weeks, we'll know which one will win. Light and shadow grapple in a stranglehold. The light is fading. Like a sling stone arcing past its zenith, we prepare for the fall.

Soon the world will be cloaked in shadow. The time of illusions is upon us, a time when men see the world they want to see. We once again descend into a dark fairyland beyond the reflecting pool where acceptance becomes intolerance, moderation turns to greed, prosperity to war. Torture and surveillance come back in vogue, progress and reason fall out of fashion. Children sight security down the barrel of a gun. A candy apple potion waits outside my door, a bright pink post-it beckoning me to drink and share this common vision of the world.

I resist this temptation of the trickster spirits as their numbers build toward Samhain. I prepare my protections and sacrifices within an isolated circle. From behind the distorted hand mirror, an innocent seductress unleashes a jarful of beautiful evils upon our world out of curiosity. She seals their remedy back inside when she learns what she has done, where it sleeps alone in darkness against our future need. A lone candle burns brighter at midnight on midwinter. A lone voice carries farther in the silence a cappella. A long drink of water tastes sweeter after the rainless days of drought.

On days like this, I wish I could transform myself into a tree. A leafy sanctuary for birds and squirrels. A shady rest for weary travelers. A stepping stone for children to climb into the sky. I would not run when the axmen came, as they always seem to do. For a short while, I would stand resolute against their rusty blades as they ticktocked away my skin, their blows ringing as regular as clockwork up and down the grove. Little do they know the skulls of their ancestors lie buried beneath my brethrens' knees. The saplings feed upon their marrow. Trees don't attack or defend, they are patient, their acorns opportunistic. Even with their ancestors felled, seeds sleep peacefully beneath the long, harsh snows of winter, waiting only for the warm breath of sunlight to revive the grove again.

The wheel must turn through its progressions. One day, the world will return to balance. Then, brightly colored blossoms will beckon rather than the flickering flames of the discarded. A world of life and rebirth rather than leaf mold and decay. A world of hope. Just as there is no summer without winter, there can be no spring without the fall.


© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

Spring Equinox 2010 (two days early)

Spring Equinox 2010 - a reading (on YouTube)

Today, the world divides into two equal parts, light and darkness, day and night, hemispheres. Patterns ripple and flow between the two across a twilight bridge where reason and emotion intertwine, a thoroughfare for dreams.

At eventide, the faeries make their presence known. They fight a proxy war beneath the banner of the Green Man to change the world from dun and gray to verdant, vital and marked with color.

At dusk, they lead a procession with tiny torches, flickering on and off, tempting restless wanderers to explore the realms of Nyx and Nott. Garments woven with threads of silver, sapphire and garnet twinkle against the indigo fabric of night. Their gossamer congregations sometimes mask the moon.

At dawn, they daub bare branches with sponges of chartreuse and burgundy that float just above the wood like a colorful haze. Each morning they experiment with palettes of purple, pink and red, preparing unique mixtures to swirl and stain fresh blossoms, applying vivid splashes based on a secret color theory whispered across the wind by the idyll masters of each pastoral, floral guild.

Betwixt, they flit and flutter on capricious yellow wings, surveying frivolous domains. Tiny harpers call the tune for a battle in song between the secular and religious, divisions whose champions are plumed in steely blue and Cardinal red. Vagabond minstrels range behind the lines to gently mock each side.

There is purpose to their chaotic motion. They seek to lull a chthonic deity into releasing his vestal maiden captive so they might initiate her into the Eleusinian mysteries and crown her Queen of Spring.

As the coronet of supple snowdrops settles upon her flowing midnight tresses, her parti-colored entourage celebrates with bawdy songs and brimming cups of nectar. The long sleep of winter has ended. Let the dreams of summer begin.

© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

Fall Equinox 2008

One by one, acorns trickle from their parents in a slow, steady hail whose sound is amplified by the intervals of silence. Some fall to the grist of stony ground, some to fallow. Some are scurried away, stored in shallow graves against a dark and needful day, or slumber until awakened by the warming fires of spring.

The first flame of autumn blossoms in a tiny, tangerine rose, its reddish-orange petals curling back toward yellow at their edges. A short-lived, daylight candle echoing the lantern that guides our spirits home.

As evenlight spreads toward evenfall, numina and peris grow restless in their garden. We sacrifice fresh herbs to ease their dreamless sleep and mark that we remember. In camera obscura, their unwinged avatars purr contentedly toward the living, an admonition that darkness always follows evening, a promise morning always follows night.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Lughnasa 2008

The year moves in cycles, a wheel with eight spokes, eight standing stones dividing spring from summer, winter from fall. An eight-act play in which we accept the roles for which we read early on and hope our lines make sense, the hero and her fool.

Today is Lughnasa, the watershed cleaving summer and the fall. The first day of the harvest whose bountiful berries preserve a taste of sunshine beyond the bitterness of snow. The last of idle somnolence as the dream of midsummer fades like the faeries whose whispered conversations murmur beneath the rain.

Sprites and water nymphs frolic in the jeweled world of a sun shower encased by tiny beads of glass, fragile. Like iridescent dragonflies, they hover and flit, dodging raindrops above the misty road whose destination they dare not reveal. Their pearls blossom in a grove atop the jungle of grass, casting starburst reflections off a spider's radiant loom as she weaves in omens to snare the Norns. Raindrops echo across the rippled surface of a pond casting uneven images like a hand mirror to the wyrd. As sunlight sparkles upon that dappled water, an empty hammock beckons in a cool but gentle breeze, a foreshadowing the fall.

One year ago we strained to read the oracles thrown at our hero's feet as her long battle waned toward victory. Her sword and banner have been returned to the stones above the watchtower mantle, polished yet stained by weather. Outside the vines have grown thick and heavy with midnight fruit, concealing her former encampment, softening the scars of her erstwhile war as the gloaming slants across the hazy forest path shrouded beyond the wall.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Faeries

Thoughts flit in and out of my subconscious like faeries on the wing. Some are shy and flirtatious, concealing themselves in the thinnest gossamer spun from spider's silk. Others are more playful, sparkling as their jewelry flashes in the sun.

Gregarious by nature, one attracts another until dozens vie for my attention. Some days, they draw up sides to wage an impromptu battle of conflicting ideas, delighting as their miniature swords prick my imagination. Other days they go into seclusion, refusing to reveal themselves for some perceived slight. Then without warning, they streak across the periphery, making me hunt them in an elaborate game of hide and seek. Most days, they converse in tones just beyond my comprehension like the babble of distant water imitating voices.

They love to try on different colors just to see which camouflages them the best. They cloak themselves in the deep blues of a winter sky and in the hazy whites of summer, in the yellow-greens of spring returned and in the myriad flames of fall. They peek out from the gray and dun fur of a chattering squirrel, from the iridescent indigo feathers of a watchful crow, from the charcoal and pearl clouds of approaching rain. Anything that catches my eye or sparks my imagination.

They are drawn to the quiet of the morning and the solitude of night. Deep stillness makes them curious. As I doze in the autumn sun, they light upon my face, tickling my nose with the slippered cat's whiskers of their feet, fanning my cheeks like newly emerged butterflies drying their wings. Through half-shaded eyes I can sometimes see them flitting back and forth like hummingbirds scenting nectar. Should my eyes burst open, they startle and take flight.

On good days the faeries dance before my eyes like dappled sunlight through the maples, whispering gold into my ears in tiny chimes of laughter on the wind. On the best days, I dance with them. I find the motion soothes me.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III