Ode to Poison Ivy

Hail, shining jewel of the forest’s edge, who, guarding the damp and shade-worn oaks, graces the green boughs of the sun-warmed hedge and hides in the root-skirts of the Wort Folks. Strong oils weep, coating your arrows-leaves: a warning, a curse to any so arrogant, ignorant, or foolish, your fierce spears fine punishment for woeful […]

Review: Sacred Actions by Dana O’Driscoll

For those of you who haven’t come across the 19th century Japanese word tsundoku, it’s a wonderful term that in my case has resulted in liberation from the guilt of often buying more books than I’m able to read at one time (the English equivalent bibliomania sounds too much like a disease for my taste!). […]

Emergence

It’s been a while. Two years, in fact. That definitely qualifies as “a while”. It would be nice to blame my absence on the pandemic, or the previous administration, or unemployment, or a new relationship, or any of a dozen terrible, wonderful, mundane things that have happened in the past two years. But the fact […]

Spirits, Spirits, Everywhere

And not a drop to drink? No, sorry, wrong poem. Sometimes it can be a bit hard for folks to wrap their heads around how a person can have a devotional practice without having a patron, per se, or at least being henotheistic or monist for that matter. I’m one of those rare, blessed writers […]

Lovers’ Night/Longest Night

This year, Lover’s Night coincides with the Longest Night. A time for union, to be sure. Whatever darkness has drawn over us in the past year, this night is the reaffirmation of the light of the human spirit, that our lights joined become the greater light, an inferno of stars living and loving on this tiny blue ball of ours.