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

Winter Solstice 2012

Winter Solstice 2012 - a reading (on YouTube)

Today is the winter solstice. This year, I know a number of people in transition, their lives full of change. For some, it is their first holiday without someone they care about. For others, it’s a time of new additions to their family. For a few, it is the first time since childhood that they might spend their holiday alone. As is every year, this has been one full of joy and sorrow.

A number of years ago I was talking with a counselor about the holidays. For me, the holidays have been a stressful time since I was a child. I only have a handful of good memories to look back and smile. More, they have just reinforced the patterns of my life and how it differs from the stereotypes our culture enshrines as normal.

Her advice? Create traditions of your own. Own the holidays in a way that makes you feel good, regardless of the expectations of those around you or society in general. I laughed. Karen and I had started doing that years earlier by lighting the house with only candles on the night of the Winter Solstice. No electric lights, no computers, no cooking after dark. The only exception we make is for the stereo to play Anonymous 4, a cappella medieval music that we find soothing. We reflect on the previous year as most people do on New Year’s Eve and think about what we want from the upcoming one. Sometimes, we share it with friends.

What started as a single night has become a 21-year tradition. Where I suggested marking the winter solstice, Karen has become more and more attached to it. This will be the first year we give each other nothing for Christmas, only a Solstice gift, only one. Don’t get me wrong, we buy gifts for other people and some things for ourselves this time of year. That is part of the society in which we were raised. Those are hard traditions to break. But as time has gone by, we both feel more and more detached from the official holiday, religious or secular.

People forget that the Christians co-opted a host of pagan symbols to celebrate the birth of their spiritual leader. Christmas trees, wreathes, stockings, Santa (or Father Christmas), Yule logs, tinsel, candy canes, holiday lights, even December 25, do not appear in their core mythology. Most originated in much older and richly varied traditions. Or maybe there was a lot more snow and reindeer in the Middle East a couple millennia ago than I thought.

Some people see that as a problem. I do not. Traditions change. We are not the same people we were two thousand years ago, just as each of us is a different person than we were two decades ago, or two days for that matter. We don’t have the same values or priorities. The pagans who converted to Christianity brought their own traditions to make their new religion seem at least familiar in order to integrate it into their lives. In synthesis, they laid claim to it. There is nothing wrong with that. Anyone who thinks there is might need to reread how the Christian New Testament changed almost all the traditions of the Old. Or examine how fervently the Celtic converts defended Christian traditions through some very dark times, at points keeping better records than Rome. Life is change. Only in death does it cease.

In medieval Europe, Christmas was a minor church feast. In fact, the church outlawed several traditions, like singing carols, as they could lead to dancing which might detract from the meaning of the day. Easter was their largest celebration. Candlemas (Imbolc) and Epiphany loomed large among a host of saints’ days throughout the year. With any hero that attains mythic status, their birthday becomes a convenient day to mark in remembrance, but their deeds are more important.

As are yours. Do what brings you joy. Give gifts, send cards, attend parties. Go to a movie and order Chinese takeout. Drink wine. Light candles. Sing and dance. Walk in a park. Play in the snow. Share your day or night with someone special, even if she’s only your cat. Bake something.

Both my sister and I remember a braided Christmas bread my mother (and then grandmother) used to bake. Independently, and with vastly different holiday traditions, we both make it this time of year. We both draw comfort from the memory of that childhood tradition. Sometimes, it is the smallest things that bring us joy. As we get older, we recognize that more.

Once again this year, we will light our candles on the longest night in celebration. Whatever your tradition, new or old, may your Solstice be warm and bright.


© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Stealth Burial

Stealth Burial - a reading (on YouTube)

I’ve gotten good at stealth burials for my family. Checking locations, scouting out the blind spots, making sure the coast is clear. I am humbled that distant people I don’t much know have entrusted me with this duty.

Our room is hidden on the back side, around a corner out of sight. The sound of surf creeps through the windows like the shadow of a thief. On the beach, the water is flat, like a mirror of our lives, two above, two below. Only ripples in the sand mark the passage of the tides.

Mackerel feast on fingerlings, leaping briefly into our world near the shore. A weathered cross marks an estate to the south of us, abandoned and empty houses lie north. The sun sinks under the clouds near the horizon, casting a deep orange glow like a torch or a lantern. A guiding light. 

An hour after sundown, we slip out to perform an early evening recon. Not a soul stirs along the beach. Just dark water against a dark horizon. I retrieve my burden and wander out.

Night blind, I wade knee deep into the ocean, a baptism of sorts. I spread their ashes, first one then the other and rinse the plastic clean. I mark the spot by the shadows of the landscape. After a moment of reflection, I wander back to change.

Focused on the deed, I’ve forgotten the scotch or cognac. I guess simple wine will have to do. A toast and a smoke, an Italian white and the pipe my father gave me. On the deck, bright stars peek through breaks in the clouds. The diamond of Delphinus swims along the Milky Way, ready to guide them home.

The next day, Poseidon or some other pelagic god offers up mementos from the sea, the perfect shell and shark’s tooth. A lone dolphin transits just offshore. At sunset the next evening, a double green flash echoes on the horizon.

That night, I dream of them on a journey by road. Before the bridge across that familiar river, I step out of their car. They say nothing, don’t even turn around. I awake in the dark, wishing them Godspeed wherever their destination, hoping that someday someone will do the same for us.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Samhain 2012

Samhain 2012 - a reading (on YouTube)

On a high, rugged hill, a ruinous castle perches, its crenellations forming a gap-toothed grin. In the donjon its hidden garrison is poised like a falcon ready to stoop upon its prey, playing draughts until their time is nigh. Inveterate gamblers, they wager on our lives.  Tonight, the portal opens.

Storm clouds mar the horizon. Bass note moans of thunder resonate below a howling soprano wind. Rain beats a cadence against rooftops like drum. Whipped into a furor by the rhetoric of the air, the sea renews its ancient rivalry with the land. Moiling up beside the water gate, ranks of waves surge forward to briefly reclaim their birthright before retreating in a Pyrrhic victory.

As the storm abates, spirits emerge through a postern disguised as a cairn-like opening, the cave of cats. Green-eyed and hungry, they creep through the savage garden, shadows against a bloody harvest moon. This one night, they knock like missed opportunity, soft yet insistent. Through a tatting of ice-worked windows, they eavesdrop on our lives.

Sheltered in warm yellow light beside a trestle heaped with bounty, we sing and eat and dance. We care not for the ancient spirits. Like the fading colors beyond our windows, we set no place for them at our table. With pastries and sweetmeats we bribe them to favor someone else's feast.

Enraged by their irrelevance, they vex us with misfortune. Their mischief comes to naught. We no longer heed the rites of kith and kin. Until they prowl the night on tiny goblins' feet, changelings of our hearth and home. It is only in that self-imposed darkness that we remember and regret.


© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

In My America

In My America - a reading (on YouTube)

Flat tax. I like this idea. In my America all men were created equal. No one should have to pay more. Let's see, $3.6 Trillion/330 million. That's only $11,000 each person in this country owes each year. A bargain at twice the  price. That's every man, woman and child. No exceptions, no deductions. Add another $3000 a year and we'll eliminate the debt in 12 years. That's only $56,000 a year for the average family of four.

But Ed, I can't afford that. It's way too much. Ok, just for you, citizen, let's see what we can do.

In my America, we don't support freeloaders. Let's cut out all that Other Mandatory spending. I don't know what it pays for anyway (Welfare, Food Stamps, Congressional pay, Military pensions, VA benefits, etc). That saves us each $1400 a year. Every hand to the wheel and nose to the grindstone.

In my America, we believe in smaller government. We don't need all that Discretionary spending (EPA, FDA, State Dept., Justice, FAA, CDC, NASA, Parks, etc.). Sounds like an alphabet soup of subsidies and job killing regulation. There's another $2000 a year we each just saved.

In my America, healthcare is a privilege, not a right. It's time to say goodbye to Medicare and Medicaid. Though I'd put that $2500 a year you save under a mattress, because when you're old and sick it will cost you an order of magnitude more. Though maybe you could just die sooner. That sure would keep medical costs down for the rest of us.

In my America, we take personal responsibility for our own retirement. No more Social Security or Disability. Though I'd invest that $2200 a year wisely, perhaps in something with a lot of growth potential. I'm thinking a mortgage derivative fund.

In my America, the Founding Fathers never intended for us to keep a standing army. If you love this country, you'll truly volunteer. And bring your own gun (because in my America, we take the 2nd Amendment seriously). Your civic-mindedness will save your fellow citizens another $2100 a year. The Minutemen are doing a bang-up job of holding down the border in Arizona.

What's that leave us? Oh, right, just the interest payments on the debt. A paltry $700 a year. Plus you still owe that $3000 a year for the next three Administrations. But we can't eliminate either of those. Because in my America, we always pay our debts.

But Ed, what will we do with the people who can't or won't pay (all those pesky poor, elderly, disabled, and, oh yeah, the children)? In my America, we'll punish them like God intended: Debtor's Prison, to the seventh generation if necessary. Hell, I'm from the South: we know how to get our money out of prisoners by putting them to work. And we don't coddle anybody. That'll solve the unemployment problem in one throw. Two birds, one stone.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. Fair's fair, right? I'll stroke my check tomorrow.


© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Fall Equinox 2012

Fall Equinox 2012 - a reading (on YouTube)

Fe-fi-fo-fum. Frost kills the giant and down he comes.

When we bought this house just over twenty years ago, the real estate listing said it sat on a well-treed lot. When I first stood on the back porch and heard the wind whispering through the pines, I knew it would be our home. The voice of the Green Man calling.

Since then, we’ve sacrificed to that sylvan spirit by planting even more trees, though you wouldn’t think there was room. I remember being told how patient we were, how many people could never wait for trees to grow so never planted any. It’s just something we do, if not for ourselves, for the next people who come along. The Green Man smiled upon us. The survivors include six oaks, two pines, two maples, two crepe myrtles and a spruce.

Until two weeks ago we would have numbered a ficus tree among them. At its prime it soared twenty to thirty feet above the rooftop of house. We had planted it the year we moved in, a houseplant we’d set free. As free as a tree can be. Seventeen years later, it repaid us in shade every afternoon. Its bower provided refuge for squirrels and birds. Its boughs even sheltered the occasional sick raccoon.

On a long winter night two and a half years ago, a rare hard freeze descended from the north. Within days the ficus had dropped all its leaves, some twenty bags full stacked at the curb. That spring, we called in a tree service to trim it back to live wood. The arborist was encouraged it would survive. Though it no longer soared as a statuesque giant, we weren’t too worried. As a sapling, this tree had survived a similar freeze, one that had claimed its companion along the fence. That summer, we saw the Green Man’s spirit still lingered as a balanced course of bright green leaves emerged.

The next winter, Jack Frost again came calling, this time accompanied by the chorus of a stiff north wind. Once again, the ficus dropped all its leaves, barely a dozen bags this time. That spring and summer, it struggled to renew. What new growth sprouted came in much farther down the branches almost exclusively on the sheltered sides. The rest remained as barren as a skeletal oak at Samhain.

That summer, a woodpecker began hollowing a nest in one of the high, thick, dead branches. He or his kin had lost their previous nesting ground when a small deadwood tree at the top of the street finally collapsed and was removed. Unfortunately, the nest remained empty as his handiwork never attracted a mate. As the summer rains settled in, bark began to peel away. Colorful, intricate fungi began to grow along the branches and in the hollows. Midday sun once again caressed almost the entire backyard. Grass that had thinned in the ficus’s shadow wove itself back into a thick, green carpet.

Last winter, no fresh freezes fell upon us. New growth returned though in a deeply lopsided fashion. Ropes of live wood threaded their way around the dead using old, gray branches as support to reach back to the sky. Another, smaller variety of woodpecker bored a nest in a different branch and raised a clutch that sought out their own place in the world come spring. The majority of branches remained barren and denuded. In a late spring storm, one came crashing down on the park side of the fence without damage. That should have been a warning yet we did not heed.

We had intended to cut the ficus back again before summer. We had hoped to balance it and remove the bulk of the deadwood before hurricane season blew in. That was not to be. Our spring was consumed with unplanned travel centered on my mother’s life and my father’s death, quickly followed by my stepmother’s. When we finally returned home, we crossed our fingers, putting off that like many other chores until the fall.

This summer, the rains descended in force, thirty-one inches total, a full nine above average. Most of that fell in five or six inch deluges, with two multi-day inundations spun from tropical storms lingering in the Gulf.

The surviving greenery filled in and thrived. The back porch returned to shade each day by mid-afternoon. The first woodpecker returned to his construction, continuing to make improvements in hopes of catching some female’s approving glance. More bark peeled, more fungus grew. We eyed the deadwood in calculation to be sure that if any more came down it, none of it would clip the porch. By the time we left for Atlanta on Labor Day weekend, we were hopeful our ficus had survived the worst.

A week later, on a Sunday after dinner, the remaining twenty feet of that green hope came crashing down. The Green Man attended its fall, ensuring it landed in the only place it could without damaging anything, missing the porch, the birdbath, the power line supports, the statue marking the grave of one of our cats. It clipped the juniper we had once used as a Christmas tree but only bent it over.

Within days we had another tree service out to cart away the body. Two days later, it was gone. The Green Man must have watched over its final passing. One of the last two remaining branches the tree service dropped came within a foot of our roof. The other did a half-gainer over the chainlink fence without bending the support bar. The wood was too rotted to be predictable. The central stump, between two and three feet across, is an amazing pattern of individual six inch stalks from the original houseplant fused together over time. We will wait until next spring to get it ground to see if an ember of the phoenix lurks within.

We spent the next Saturday afternoon planting a crepe myrtle to honor my father’s and stepmother’s memory. I think she especially would be pleased by the new myrtle’s dark pink flowers. We plan to trim it up to be more tree than bush. One day, we hope this myrtle will shade the back porch like its lavender flowered cousin in the courtyard. Perhaps one day, it too will brighten our lives with fluttering, deep pink rain.

I will miss the ficus but will not mourn it. Death is just the balance of a natural cycle. Even fallen, none of its leaves had even begun to wilt. The only sad part to me is that had it lived in its natural habitat, it might have re-rooted with stringers, or provided a rich environment for a new life to take seed. Its end, while painful, opens space for something new to grow. I see that as a metaphor for most loss in this life.

The equinox is a time of balance between light and darkness, a twilight buffer between the summerlands and the land of the sleeping dead. In autumn, the Green Man dons a brightly colored mask, reminding us to celebrate not to mourn. We will see these souls again if only in different guises.

Fe-fi-fo-fum. Frost kills the giant and down he comes. Be he live or be he dead, may he rise again to shade our bed.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Democracy at Work

Yesterday, I attended my second political rally at Obama’s Seminole, Florida whistle-stop. Back in ’83, I heard Gary Hart speak at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana before some monkey business derailed his candidacy. Yesterday was Karen’s second time seeing a President. Her first was a speech in ’88 when Reagan bribed and bussed in a bevy of federal workers to the Capitol steps so his speech wouldn’t seem unattended. Ah, the good old days of graft.

Were the President not speaking within walking distance, I doubt either of us would have gone. I am half a political junkie though I prefer the clarity of transcripts and certain insights on the internet to partisan rallies. But how often in this life would I get to see a sitting President in person? Not very. Four years ago, friends of ours made the pilgrimage to witness his first inauguration. Theirs was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

So we braved the line at SPC Seminole on Wednesday evening to get tickets then wandered down on Saturday morning two hours before Obama’s speech. Like the President, we approached from the north. By the time we hit 113^th, the road was already closed and guarded. Police, parks and community officers manned the intersections and outposts. Red and blue lighted sedans, SUVs and pickups lined both sides of the road.

Once on campus, we were greeted by a sea of diversity, with a fleet of busses crashing like waves upon the shore, each moment disgorging more. Across the street, a Civil War skirmish line of protestors, perhaps a hundred, shouted their rallying cries, armed with the same battle flag that adorned our side.

A Disney-esque line snaked its way through familiar parking lots. A lone helicopter circled overhead. Pinellas’s finest were in charge of the somewhat chaotic crowd control, complete with conflicting lawful orders. As President’s motorcade crept nearer, they diverted and rediverted the line back and forth from the road to the sidewalk before deciding where we posed the minimum threat.

We formed an instant bond with the party of twenty-somethings in front of us who came up from Sarasota. Their day had started early. They were witty and knowledgeable, the perfect companions for our wait. They even tried to convince a deputy we were among their merry band of brothers when he broke the line just in front of us. But we came together again soon enough. The only problem we encountered was a herd of a half dozen self-identified and seemingly self-entitled fifty-something Republicans trampling their way through the line. We ignored them as their t-shirts professed they were engaged on the correct side of the argument.

At the end of the line, a mobile, scissoring sheriff’s watchtower overlooked a gatehouse garrisoned by a company of uniformed Secret Service. We entered a portcullis of a dozen metal detectors complete with magic wands. The whistle and mini-flashlight on my keychain garnered extra attention but otherwise there were no issues. A clutch of forcibly abandoned umbrellas lined a table just outside like an impromptu, OCD garage sale.

The cordoned field enclosed a crowd eleven thousand strong. Black uniformed silhouettes on the rooftops scanned us and the nearby woods for threats through their binoculars. Inside, as in line, volunteers distributed free water as light shields against the Florida heat. Though the staffers trying to energize the crowd met with more muted success. Despite the cloud cover, it was just too hot.

The day had dawned cloudy but not threatening. The field was muddy, humid and stifling from a deluge two days before. The pleasant breeze died as the sun emerged just in time to bear down upon the public press. We later heard one hundred people collapsed from the heat, ten of them hospitalized. One young woman was carried from the field by EMS like a wounded soldier about ten yards in front of us.

The President was a fashionable fifteen minutes late, which allowed most of the line behind us to file in. In later reports, we heard some were turned away when we hit capacity. We were lucky to get in. Perhaps we should have started our trek earlier.

Charming Charlie Crist performed the introduction. I will resist using his other sobriquet as he has become an ally rather than an adversary. He stood before the crowd as a former Republican governor citing how his erstwhile Party had abandoned him. If nothing else, as a former Rockefeller Republican from decades ago, I could empathize. The follies of my youth.

Here is where I must come to full disclosure. I am a Democrat. Although Obama wasn’t my first choice, I want him to succeed. I have a laundry list of reasons that it is unlikely I will ever again register as a Republican, at least until they undergo some very serious reforms. In that party, in my estimation, change must come from within. Still, I try not to let that distort my lens.

After a series of chants and very eerie “four more years” salutes from the crowd, Obama alighted at the podium. First, he recognized his allies, Gov. Crist, Sen. Nelson, Rep. Betty Castor. Of those three, Crist received the loudest cheers even though, unlike the other two, he is currently without portfolio. Nelson’s name received only a slightly worryingly, tepid response.

Unlike Crist, the podium was not miked well for Obama. The President was witty and interactive, improvising with the crowd. Unfortunately, that meant each time he turned to speak to an individual supporter, he turned away from the mikes at times leaving the rest of us in a Monty Python skit. ("Blessed are the Greeks?" "Oh, it's the MEEK!") Crist definitely knew better how to work the crowd and still maintain the microphone. That was perhaps the most disappointing experience of the day. 

Obama spoke for half an hour almost precisely to the second. It took the celebratory crowd five minutes before they calmed enough to listen in. He sprinkled several clever sound bites in with a detailed, four-point plan for moving the country forward. Prosperity comes from the middle out, not the top down. This is an election about choice not cynicism. We have a responsibility to keep the promises we’ve made.

His four points centered on creating manufacturing jobs, not rewarding corporations for outsourcing; controlling the nation’s energy through a diversity of domestic production; focusing on education to provide people with the skills, degrees and financing they need to succeed; and responsibly reducing the Federal deficit by rolling back taxes on the wealthy to the levels under the Clinton Administration and the prosperity it saw, as well as using the savings from ending two wars to pay down the debt.

Throughout, Obama came across soft-spoken. His speech was full of light, prosperity and solutions, and a quiet hope, though he never invoked that word. He sounded a clear counter-note to darkness and doom I constantly hear from the other side, which seems to say that our best days are behind us, and that tax cuts and gutting regulations are our only hope at salvation. As with many points in their platform, their arguments seem to ignore the economists and the advice of experts in favor of ideology.

The response from the crowd was more intriguing than the speech itself. In rising levels of applause, people admired, third, Obam’s bullet point on education, then, second, that bin Laden was finally dead. But the single most uniting issue that saw the crowd spontaneously erupt to drown out the President? His support of gay marriage and gay rights. That was perhaps the most surprising response. Seminole is not exactly a bastion of liberalism in admittedly moderate Pinellas County. In fact, our state rep climbed into office two years ago from the depths of Tea Party central.

In closing, Obama encouraged everyone to talk, not just to people who shared their opinions, but to people who didn’t, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Dialogue is the mainsail of a successful democracy. He then encouraged everyone to register and to vote. To reinforce that point, he gave out a website: Gottavote.com.

With that, we began the long, overheated walk back home, downing more water, thankful that our training for Dragon*Con had prepared us for the noonday sun. Just as there was a line to get in, there was a narrow, funneled line to get out, directed by our county’s finest into trampling the landscape.

Tired after three hours of walking and standing in the Florida heat, it took me the rest of the day to recover. After napping and downing a couple Gatorades to rehydrate, Karen and I swung back by the campus on our way to grab a quick dinner out. All the busses, staffers and supporters were gone, leaving a only handful of workers to clean up the mess. Watching them bag up the litter and discarded bottles, I saw a metaphor. The still cordoned off scene seemed to resonate with so many experiences from the past four years and the fundamental nature of democracy at work. In this case, perhaps, a work in progress.

A worthwhile experience despite the energy-draining heat. One I’m sure I will remember fondly for many years to come regardless of the outcome of this election.


© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III