I’m turning owl these days. Eyes wide to the wonder star. Wings stretched over sea-cliff chapels. Crashing, hailing, shining.
I follow hoof prints to the top of the mossy granite, the holy cross, the giant’s tooth, the bed that says: “love over everything”
Oh warm bowl of meat and poetry. Feasting, weeping, singing.
I sing into that cave of sainthood and crawl inside. At the mouth where each wave meets its glorious death I find a new horizon of yearning.
Woman of desires that I am.
I see that ocean ahead of me and I am filled with a joy I know is not my own. A boundless and bottomless mystery blesses my cheeks with its salty kisses and I grow a little taller in its wisdom and deeper in its loving reality.
I braid seaweed in my hair and hide a salmon in my bosom and crawl out into the world again with a new prayer on my lips
“Owl-Eyed, Star-Maker, Deep-Sea-Captain!
Shelter me from the pirates of passions that wish to bind me.
Make me new in the river where you bathe your flock.
May I always rejoice in your ever-rising and restoring love that never dies, never ends, never leaves me.”
Yesterday, as I walked through the streets of London I tripped into a terrible loneliness and sorrow. I sweetened my tongue with antiquity and art but it was still there as I walked through Roman Britain and down the lanes of memory.
So I thought of that salty sea blessing and remembered that cave and that star and that great love adventure.
I reached for the seaweed in my hair and the salmon in my breast and I jumped into that river again.
And in those waters I am filled with peace, hope and vision.
KNIGHTS OF THE BLACKBIRD BRAILLE
I’ve started a pilgrimage into a different kind of homeland. I’m holding a hand out for the blackbird and I’ll be sharing whatever insights come here.