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 […]

Demarcations

Where is the line between prayer and poetry? It’s blurred more often than not. This is why I love Pinsky, Heaney, the Romantics. That very ambiguity is delicious. I love how my pagan gods hide beneath the rhythms of secularism. Today, I’d like to share one of my favorite poems by Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. […]

Scrolls

I. Trailing stiff fingers across seeping sandstone, deeper and deeper into the thrumming earth. Beneath the sacred hill, down, down, down, plunging in spiral darkness. Empty corridors shining with fae fire, Slipping faster, flowing emptiness surrounds times before, drifting ghosts across root and rock show clear memory. II. Learning more, travel’s harder, words choking. Reading, […]

Tree Twin Lament

Needles cramp my hand, writing your sap out of my blood. Me, born in screaming winter depths; you, planted come spring. Roots garroting themselves in a too-small plot of soil, Until trunk wounds seep amber with cankerous infection. Arbor(su)icide or accident of circumstance? Frenetic meat-monkey, my escape proved too easy. Love, did you choke on my pain until I could fly free?

Our Lady of the Bathtub

I. Standing under the streaming spray of the shower head, Devotion pours over steam-pinked skin. Warmed by salamanders curled deep in the pipes, Fire and water cleanse and comfort. Lady of the Healing Well, Brigid of the Sacred Flame, Take my tears, cradle my heart, Here, in your most humble of holy places. II. She stands, […]