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My Reynard Thoughts

31/5/2020

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I wrote this poem back in 2015. I was feeling very frustrated a being unable to return to the UK to live, at being trapped in a pretty miserable situation, so it's a pretty miserable poem - but I've always liked the rhythm of it, and so I finally did something with it. Not much has changed.


In the kennel of my mind
My Reynard thoughts pace
Nine steps to the wall
And then retrace

Exit strategy one
Is ineffective
Blame, entreaty
Replay the story
Nine steps to the wall
And then retrace

Exit strategy two
Is still unthinkable
Comfort, sleep
A bolted meal
Nine steps to the wall
And then retrace



Exit strategy three
A risky plan
Anger, torpor
Drink of water
Nine steps to the wall
And then retrace

Nine steps to the wall
And there's a barrier
Exit, exit, exit
Must be somewhere

Nine steps to retrace
Another barrier
This one's called acceptance
But retrace

In the kennel of my mind
My haggard thoughts pace
Exit, exit, exit
And retrace

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There's more poetry available in my webshop,
in chapbook form,
at this link.


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Bonnyclabber and Crab Apples

28/11/2019

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I've been working fairly intensely with a body of stories about Manannán mac Lir which are sometimes called O'Donnell's Kern. More folklore than mythology, this kind of story about Manannán has always fascinated me. People call them "trickster tales", but that category has always felt a bit too offhand for my liking. I might call them teaching tales, because there is surely a lesson in them, and that lesson is an important one in Celtic culture: that of hospitality.

You can read the stories for yourself. They are in Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men under the heading "Manannán at Play", and in Standish O'Grady's Silva Gadelica as "O'Donnell's Kern". A wonderful, and quite different version from Islay turns up in J. F. Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands as "The Slim, Swarthy Champion." As if that isn't enough, I'm currently working on a retelling of them on my YouTube channel. [Update: Here's the video.]

As usual, I have fallen in love with my subject, and as sometimes happens, that led to a poem. It's full of obscure references to the tales, but I will leave you to hunt them down for yourself. You don't even need to leave the comfort of your seat. All those books I mentioned, above, are in the public domain and kicking around on the internet.

Bonnyclabber and Crab Apples

I who was hunting with fair Fionn
I who received tribute on Barrule
I who cast off my shimmering cloak
Going about the raths and duns
Paddling from Man to Kintyre
And from Kintyre to green Islay
Rathlin to the seat of Red Hugh

The bodach went seeking crowdie
Hospitality without pride
I never looked for prominence
My tongue was sweet and learned
The voice of my harp beguiling
The son of the earl knew the sweet
The Mac an Iarla knew the sour

From high Knock Áine I vanished
I was a rainstorm on a plain
A healer to the MacEochaid
A cattle raider in Sligo
Until I came to O’Kelly
Twenty marks I got for their taunts
And lulled them into their slumber

With the puddle water leaking
From my shoes I walked to Leinster
Tired I was seeking a mead cup
Their clanging strings offended me
The bloody day they had of me
Bonnyclabber and crab apples
The feast of Manannán mac Lir



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Here by the Sheiling, Here by the Loch

17/8/2019

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Imagery of water horses and kelpies is popular these days. Most of it features creatures with sharp teeth and evil glowing eyes, maybe with a skull head inspired by completely unrelated folk traditions. However, most folklore describes them as beautiful horses, capable of enticing people onto their backs because of their fine appearance.
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The first time I read a story about a water horse was on a trip to Islay. I had checked an old volume of folktales out of the library in Edinburgh to take with me for holiday reading. I wish I could find that particular volume, or that specific story again, but I don't remember the author or title of the book.

There is something electrifying and shocking the first time you read or hear a water horse story, that never quite leaves you. There are many, many stories of the each uisge (water horse) in these old collections, and as best I remember it, the one I'm thinking of ran like this:

Some lasses had gone to the summer sheiling with the cattle. One evening they saw a magnificent black horse wearing a saddle and bridle richly decorated with silver. He was prancing up and down the shore of the loch. One girl, in particular, was fascinated, but her friends convinced her to stay away from it. However, the horse was persistent, appearing tame and friendly, and seeming to invite them to ride. Finally, the lass mounted up, and of course found that she was stuck fast to the beast. He took her into the loch and drowned her.

Water horse folklore is common all over the British Isles and Scandinavia, with each area having its own beliefs about the details of the creature, and its own style of story. I've written here previously about the Shetland njuggle, and there is more than a whiff of water horse about my story The Wild Mare, which features in the chapbook you can see toward the bottom of this page.

The poem below is inspired by another common variant of the story, also from the Scottish highlands, in which the horse shapeshifts into an attractive man who courts a girl. As they are sitting cuddled together, he dozes off and she notices some clue as to his real identity - hooves for feet, or sand in his hair. In some versions she manages to cut away the part of her apron where his head lies, and so make her escape. In others, she isn't so lucky. But what if she is just too lovesick to do that?

The form of the poem hints a little at the style of both Scottish ballads and Gaelic songs. My head is always full of those, like this one, whose title in English would be "Maids of the Sheiling". Don't let the Gaelic put you off, there's a translation below the video.
I published this poem on my Patreon page back in April. That's always a good place to check for new pieces of writing, including poems.

Here by the Sheiling, Here by the Loch

Oh, my darling
So handsome and dark
Here by the sheiling
Here by the loch


Oh, my darling
With sweet words you woo'd me
Late in the evening
Here at the sheiling


Oh, my darling
You met me at noonday
Your head in my lap
Here by the loch


Oh, my darling
You doze on my apron
How dark are you tresses
Here by the sheiling


Oh, my darling
My fingers meet sand
As they run through your black hair
Here by the loch


Oh, my darling
My heart weeps with sadness
My heart leaps with fear
Here by the sheiling


Oh, my darling
How could I leave you?
How can I lose you now?
Here by the loch


Oh, my darling
The sunlight is sweet to me
Warm on my shoulders
Here by the sheiling


Oh, my darling
My heart is betraying me
Hold me fast when you carry me
Into the loch


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My ears are keen, my breath is warm

A chapbook collection containing the short story The Wild Mare, plus four poems which share the theme of horses.

Size 8.5" x 5.5"

21 pages

Please see product page for more information.

$
8.00    

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Brigid of the White Spring

16/4/2019

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One morning last week I decided to do a candle meditation, instead of my usual "eyes shut" style. No sooner had I begun to gaze at the flame than I received this message/download or whatever name you want to give it. When it came to an end, I wondered whether I would be able to recall it to write it down, but that also seemed to be fairly easy. I am thinking about maybe recording it as an audio, later on. Let me know if you think that would be a good idea!
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photo: Jonathon Wilkins CC (BY SA 3.0)

Brigid of the White Spring


I am the fire of the life force
I am the fire of creativity
I am Brigid of the white spring
I am Brigid of the white spring
Do not take your eyes away from the fire
I am Brigid of the white calf
I am the fire of creativity
I am the fire of poetry
I am Boann of the white spring
I am Boann of the white calf
I am Brigid of the white spring
Do not take your eyes away from my fire
I am the flame of poetry
I am the fire of creativity
I am Brigid of the white rain
I am Brigid of the white snow
I am Boann of the white spring
I am the pool with nine salmon
I am the pool overlooked by nine hazels
I am the pool of the wisdom of nine eternities
I am Brigid of the white spring
I am Brigid of the white calf
Dive into the depths of my healing waters
Do not take your eyes from the flame
Dive into the depths of my healing waters
I am Boann of the white spring
I am the pool of nine wise salmon
I am the pool of nine hazels
I am the pool of the wisdom of nine eternities
I am Brigid of the white spring
Do not take your eyes away from the flame
I am the fire of creativity
I am the fire of poetry
I am Brigid of the white spring




































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Poems for the Season of Imbolc
$
8.00    
You might enjoy this chapbook of poems about Brigid and the Cailleach, centred on the celebration of Imbolc, but relevant at other times of the year, too. Click here for more details.
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Brigid Walks the Land. Fire Up Your Forge!

6/1/2019

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It's starting. Can you feel it? The light has already changed so obviously here in Oregon. Something is waking up in me. I am not usually depressed around MIdwinter. I love the dark and the long nights, and don't mind being alone at this time like some people do. But I have been deeply depressed recently.
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Yesterday morning was not the first day I noticed the change in the light, but it was the first morning that it broke through my gloom and touched me in some physical way. Got through my skin. As often happens around Imbolc, a new poem for Brigid came to me.

wind in the hair and
fire in the head
Brigid walks the land

fire up your forge!
gather your cattle
for calving
fletch your arrows
and set them alight

go to a high place
and look how
she has spread
her cloak of green fields
and brown fields

Brigid walks the land
fire up your forge!


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Bridget by Jo Dose
Yes, Imbolc is coming. We think of snowdrops, and increasing light, of Brigid and the Cailleach. Some consider it a time of ascendency for the Rowan tree. I have been wanting to share a little something about this poem, called "Song" by Seamus Heaney for awhile now.
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I love this for many reasons.  Each mention of tree and flower seems to bring the spirit of that plant to me. The red berried rowan which has associations with witchcraft and protection, the alder which so often has its feet in the water, the rushes, the immortelles - which is another name for Helichrysum, those little button-like flowers that dry so beautifully. Then there is birdsong and "mud flowers" and dialect. It's a lot in eight lines! And the music of what happens. What about that? Well, it's referencing this:
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So now you know. It's a bit Zen, isn't it? I find myself so frustrated by what is happening in our world. But I can only do what is given to me to do. Sometimes I have to accept that I am caught up in events much greater than myself, events not of my making. In the story, Stephens goes on the say that Fionn loved what happened and "would not evade it by the swerve of a hair". We spend a lot of time thinking about how to evade what might happen, not stopping to think that our energy is better spent dealing with whatever is before us. That we are better off responding to life with all the strength and beauty we can muster. That was always Fionn's way.

As the season of Imbolc comes, and Brigid walks the land, I always feel Her fiery inspiration. There is work to do.

I have recently created a chapbook of some of my other poems about Brigid and the Cailleach, written over the years. This little book is a handy size to use in rituals and devotional work.
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See product page for details.
Poems for the Season of Imbolc
$
8.00    

    Subscribe to my monthly newsletter and never miss a blog post. In return, I promise to keep newsletters short and limit them to one per month, and of course, never to share your details!
    Subscribers also get access to special offers in the shop.

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Lost in time

9/11/2018

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I struggle with homesickness on a monumental scale, as I know so many of my ancestors must have done. I've written before about how I feel about my own shadowy lineage. Family trees and DNA are all very well, but for me, "my ancestors" are so much more. Genealogies may be linear, but I am not so sure that time is.

Figures I have looked up to as old men when I was in my thirties and forties are gone now. Poets and tradition bearers, musicians...  People close to me have gone, too, several before their time. This is the state of getting older. It's part of the preparation, I suppose.

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Poet's Pub - Alexander Moffat 1980
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The past has always had a grip on me. I'm sure it makes me difficult to be with at times . . . but, there! Do you never feel it? How time and place spiral together, holding . . . something, in a particular curve of the land, a particular street at sunset. There's many an Irish jig and reel named after the "humours" of a place. "The Humours of Tulla", "The Humours of Limerick" etc. I love this old word, which describes something like the mood of a place. The word comes, originally, from a Latin root describing dampness or fluids. (There is a whole medical system based on the humours, or fluids, of the body.) This in turn makes me think of the old saying for knowing something intuitively: "I feel it in my waters."

Time sits, I sometimes think, like a moving column of vapour, about any given place. The things that happened there, what was thought or felt, all spirals like some kind of blind spring. The past is immanent, if only imperfectly reachable. I have lived in places where I could sense what the land felt in its waters. Sometimes, it's almost an ecstatic practice. Occasionally, it is excruciating. But I digress.

This poem is echoes of times, places and people who have passed. Some well remembered, others only sensed. They now merge and don't merge, spiralling in those columns of vaporous memory above their places. Even the well-remembered past can only live partially in our memories. So much of it belongs to place.

Lost in Time

My elders are becoming my ancestors now.
It doesn't happen all at once, or on the day they die.
They first must be purified like silver in the fire
A process which is not painful, but necessary.

Slowly they move from the tumbled houses,
Determinedly they step from the photograph pages
To build anew that which was lost,
That which was gained, but could not be held.

Dreamily they drift from their country upbringings
And their suburban upbringings among the roses.
Drift toward halls of learning and drinking establishments,
Smoke filled back rooms of pubs where poets rant.

They drift toward the beaches to collect the seaweed
And toward the moors to cut the peats.
They crack shells and hunt deer
And journey by horseback or coracle.

They sing in folk clubs and work in banks,
Emigrate to Canada or move down south.
They drink too much and rest too little
And then they are gone.

And there's me, always late to the party,
The last to hear today's news.
Nosing around in the past I miss the big event,
But unearth some old treasure.

When I look up, I find my elders have all left.
I shake my head in wonder. Was it always thus?
One day you look around, they've left you the house.
You walk the corridors, you try the beds.


Lost in Time is from my collection of poems called Credne's Hand.
Credne's Hand

A collection of poetry in praise of Celtic deities. Mabon, Brigid, Manannán mac Lir and many more.

8.5" x 5.5"

15 pages

See product page for details.

$
8.00    
Aeons and aeons pass, I am becoming the elder,
I am becoming the child.
I drift toward my elders, I follow the stream of their poesy,
A strong stream, through the hills of memory.
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The late Hamish Henderson

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The Wild Mare

28/10/2018

2 Comments

 
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A couple of things I read recently came together in my mind and inspired me to write this story. I hope you enjoy its mysteries as much as I enjoyed writing it. It seems to fit the season.

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There's a wild black mare living somewhere up on the common grazing. She stays at the fringes of the herds. Some say she's their queen. No one has really tried to catch her. I don't think they will. She's uncanny.

One old boy said he saw her and she ran right into a deep reedy pool. Went in head first, he said. And never came up. The next day, old Joe saw her come up suddenly out of the river by the pack horse bridge. Forty miles away.

They know her by a white streak in her tail. You only see it when the wind's just so, or she's swishing it at flies.

No. No one has tried to catch her and I really hope they never try. Humans are awfully clever. They can be bloody minded when they want something. It doesn't bear thinking about.

I followed her for awhile. Not to catch her or to try to gentle her, but because she kept whispering to me. In my morning dreams I'd hear her. Just as I was waking. But I couldn't make out words. How did I know it was her? I just knew. And I would pull on my breeks and grab a bit of bread in my hand to eat later and run up into the hills trying to catch sight of her.

There was no pattern to it. One time I saw her in Joe's herd. Just grazing in among his mares, she was.



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She saw me. She held my gaze for what felt like hours but I knew that when I finally had to move she would run. And she did.

I thought she'd go off over the tops but she headed straight through the valley following the river. She was so swift my eye could hardly follow her. Then I heard a lot of splashing

I went back the next day, and the next. There wasn't a pony in sight.

The whispering in my head got louder. It started in the evening, too, when I was sitting trying to relax.

But there were no words to it. Just that sound - a horse's breath, the sound of a swishing tail. But there was a kind of meaning behind the sound. I just couldn't make it out and it was driving me insane. I wanted to hear it clearer, or closer. I was sure there was meaning there. That she had some message for me. Some wisdom or maybe some request.

Autumn came. I was lean as a brush handle from walking the valleys and the tops and I saw her regularly. But I couldn't get close

I swear she had a special smell about her. Like gorse and like roses. I'd stay downwind of her and the smell was almost overwhelming some days. She watched me. Oh, yes! She watched me. And I watched her.

Her mane was long. Long and tangled. It hung in ropes, dragging the ground when she grazed. Her nostrils were soft and flaring. Her back and rump were curved like the back of a beautiful woman.

My dreams started to be haunted by horses. Nothing made sense. There were horses who talked and others that flew with wings or turned into beautiful fairy women. The hills themselves were giant horses or had shadows of giant horses walking across them.

Over and over I dreamt of a mare who birthed twin foals. The next time I'd see her she'd be distraught and looking for them. Or maybe she'd have one foal but be searching frantically for the other. I'd try to help her, but nothing was ever resolved in those dreams.
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Media Nocte - Donna Quinn
I decided to stop going out up the valley. It was cold. I realised that I was unkempt. Maybe a little deranged. I cleaned my house and mended my clothes, I went to the shops, I raked the leaves, and went to the pub and played darts. The dreams stopped.

One morning I woke up to someone rattling hard at my door latch. I opened the door just in time to see her. To see her skid to a halt on the stone path like she was headed straight for my door. When she saw me opening the door she spooked. She wheeled ‘round on her back legs and pelted up the road whinnying. I stood dumbfounded, then thought If she was running toward the door, who rattled the latch?

I paced the floor for an hour, drank tea. I shoved bread in my pocket. The frost had burned off by mid-morning. It was almost hot. I wandered the footpaths, scenting the air

Finally I saw her. She was across the valley, two thirds of the way up. She had a different look about her. She was by herself, she looked calm. She was up among patches of black scree. But she was blacker yet in the sunlight

It didn't seem that she saw me as I made my way over tussocks and around boulders. I would have to come down and then up the other side to reach her. It never occurred to me to be furtive. Maybe something had changed. I didn't expect her to run now.

It was hard, getting up the south side of the valley. I followed a sheep path, hoping to cut around the hill toward her. Suddenly the mist came down the way it does. It was a cold mist, but I had been sweating. I remember that. Then I was disoriented. The mist will do that to you. Just come down and blind you. I could make out some boulders  and started carefully toward them to sit down and wait things out.  It would probably lift again.

I heard her breathing and whispering to me. Then I slipped on the wet scree. I slid helplessly but harmlessly down. Thirty or forty feet, I suppose. I was cursing to myself under my breath. Shit! Shit! I didn't know where I was. I couldn't see where I was. My hip was a little bruised and one side of my body was wet where I lay now on wet grass, not daring to move.
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The whispering came again. She could have been right beside me but I heard no hooves. She was comforting me, I thought. I felt comforted.

The mist did lift. I knew I needed to go home. I was cold and wet. I picked my way down and made it to the road by dusk.

I built up the fire, fell into a hot bath and a warm bed. I watched the mare birth her twins and get them on their feet. They suckled while I listened to the mare's breathing.

I woke up late and a bit sore. I sorted the fire and tidied up. I went to the pub and had a big lunch and two pints. It was cold and spitting rain when I came out. Already getting dark. 

I tried to have a normal evening. Read a book about local wildflowers. I woke up in my chair by the fire, gave up and went to bed.

I dreamt that it snowed, and there was a lot of noise outside the house. In the morning I went out and there were horse tracks everywhere. All over the garden and in the road. There was thick snow stuck to the sides of the house, and there were horse tracks in the snow on the walls of the house. Probably on the roof, too, for all I knew.

I woke up and looked out the window. It had snowed. I rushed out into the garden searching everywhere for the tracks. I looked in the road and behind the garden walls. There were no tracks.

I went back into the house shivering. I noticed that I was pacing and wringing my hands. I wanted to weep. When I was young I had been deeply and desperately in love. This feeling was similar. And similar, too, to the feeling I had when I was jilted a few months later.

I paced the house, took another bath, went to bed early. The next day I felt better. Life became bearable. The feelings fell away and the dreams stopped.

I went out to the valley a few times. Stayed on the footpaths. Never saw any horses. I tried not to do too much thinking.

I dreamed I was by the Hippocrene Spring where a sleek gray colt recited nature poetry to me. I had never heard such beauty. Birds and flowers, water and trees seemed to flow from his mouth. He flew up toward the sun on Pegasus wings. And for a moment I sat on those powerful shoulders.
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I understood why all this was happening. We are all made of stardust. Something to do with meteors and scree. And the wild black mare and I got mixed up together with that black mineral. We both got a dose of it from the same source. And that explained it in the dream. And for a few moments after I awoke it made sense, but then of course. It didn't

I saw Joe in my dreams. He was a boy of fifteen. He was breaking the black mare in to drive. She looked about three years old and she wasn't ready. Joe was hesitant and she stood frozen. He looked at her bridle. He went into the barn. She stood frozen. He took the bridle off. And she relaxed.

What was he doing? Working blinkers onto the bridle. He put it back on her. She stiffened. But he told her to walk on she panicked and rushed between the old stone gateposts breaking the light harness and skidding down the road.

It snowed again. My dreams were filled with snow and the image of the wild mare. Emerging over and over from the river by the packhorse bridge. And a startled Joe, old (as he is now) looking in wonder as she disappears across the hills.
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photo Alan James
I see the stone gateposts through his eyes. I see his finger reach down and touch the rusty bolt that protrudes from one post, where some tail hairs are caught. There is blood on the bolt and on his finger. An old man's finger.

My dreams are filled with snow. The wild mare is made of water. Snow is water. It's no wonder she can get everywhere. She is in the snow. She is in the water and the black scree. And so am I.

Then spring comes. It comes early. By the end of March grass is outstripping the wildflowers. The morning whispering is starting again. It wakes me, then I lie in bed savouring it. Sometimes I think I can smell the gorse. And the roses.

Not long after Easter I go into the valley one morning with a new idea. A light, damp mist clings to everything. I simply stand by the water. I stand and wait. Calling her in my mind, with my spirit.

She comes and stands right beside me. I stand frozen. I realise how afraid she is of humans. How much this is costing her. Ideas form like her words in my mind.
I was lost in a storm
And ran over the tops into this valley
I saw the herd and joined them


I never want to be caught again

I have always resisted the stallion
But this year the urge was too strong
And I am in foal


I look at her.
She does not look like she is in foal.
The smell of flowers clings to the mist.

The other mares will be rounded up soon
I will have to foal alone
I cannot protect the foal by myself


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Tears stream down my face. For what can I do? How can I help her? I try to ask her this but I am standing alone with the sun coming out and the fading smell of roses.

On Friday night I see Joe in the pub. I casually mention seeing the wild mare a couple of times recently.

Joe looks at his hands. He looks out the window.

"I heard she might be yours, Joe. I wonder whether she'd be for sale at all..."

Joe stands frozen. Something in the way he looks makes me feel pity.

"No one knows who that black devil belongs to! Who told you that?"

He's got me cornered there. I tell him I must have misunderstood and offer to buy him a drink, but he makes some excuse and leaves.

I lose a few games of darts and start walking home. Halfway up my road I see her. In the dark, at first I think she's walking toward me. But she is walking away.

I feel completely lost. I don't know what to do. At home I build up the fire but I'm in a blind rage. I fling the poker across the room, break three mugs and throw books against the wall.
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Out on the hill, in the night it's lashing rain. The mare is looking for her lost foal. The twin tries to keep up with the mare's frantic movements, but it's cold and tired. She doesn't respond to its little whinnies. She is obsessed with finding the lost one.

There is a flash of lightning. The sodden foal spooks and takes off, running through the dark. It slips on the wet scree. It's dark and the storm is noisy. I can't see anything. In the morning I wake up feeling drained.

Kelpie Weather by Skye-Fyre

I try to make sense of it all. I am tired of this. It's all just blind alleys. It's things I can do nothing about. The pieces of the story don't quite fit, no matter how I try to put them together.

I don't know what a wild mare and foal need. Probably other mares to watch the foal while the mother sleeps. I can't live out on the hills. People would be rounding me up, never mind the mare!

The only thing I can think would be to bring the mare down and put her in my back garden for a few months. But people would notice. A mare like that wouldn't like it there. I’m don’t even know whether it’s legal. Then I laugh at myself. I'd never catch her!

The dreams are all I know for a fortnight. The whispering in my head is strong and I feel like a ghost.

Twice I go up the valley. I stand by the river but she doesn't come. I start leaving the side gate open.
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On May eve I decide to walk up the valley. I still have several hours of daylight left. I see Joe's herd right away. Their bellies are big. It's as if they know he'll bring them in soon. Almost as if they're waiting for it. She's not with them.

I wonder to myself whether she's real at all. I try to count the number of times I've seen her. But it's hard to separate which times were dreams. Maybe they were all dreams.

Twice I think I see her up near the tops. Both times it’s a patch of scree.

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That night I dream of the storm again. A wet lifeless foal slides grotesquely down a patch of scree.

Impossibly far. Hundreds of feet. Nose first, it slides and slides. Like some kind of birth.

In the morning I wake up to rain and sleet lashing the windows. It's quite bright. It won't last. I sit drinking coffee. Feeling depressed. Again, I try to make sense of this.

If Joe misused a horse when he was a boy, that horse would be more than sixty years old. Horses don't live that long. It never occurs to me that what I dreamt might never have happened.

By lunchtime the sun has come out but I still feel miserable. I do the washing up but I'm still going 'round and 'round with the wild mare. What if she is some kind of ghost? Or kelpie? Is she the ghost of the mare? Or one of her twins? The more obvious answer is that I've gone mad.

I have a vague idea to take a walk up the valley, but I procrastinate. About four o'clock I hear Joe's herd clattering down the road. Joe, his wife and his brother and a young couple I don't know are driving them over to the farm.

As soon as they're away I slip out and head up the valley. I don't really expect to see her. She's probably miles away today with that going on.

I head straight down to the river. Across the packhorse bridge and up the south side I make for the scree and boulders where I fell that day. I sit down in the sun.

Tell me what to do I whisper
The side gate is open
You can slip in and shelter behind the garden wall


I sit for a long time trying to remember the scent of gorse and of roses.

Sometimes at night I think I hear her walk under my window.


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You can now buy a slightly updated version of this story, along with some of my poems about horses, in this chapbook.
My ears are keen, my breath is warm

A chapbook collection containing the short story The Wild Mare, plus four poems which share the theme of horses.

Size 8.5" x 5.5"

21 pages

Please see product page for more information.

$
8.00    

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If you enjoyed this post, you might also like Lessons from selkies and horse whisperers
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Almost May

16/4/2018

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At this time of year my thoughts always turn to Padstow. This poem was in my head when I woke up this morning. If you're not familiar with the Padstow May Day Obby Oss, you can see it in action here. It's a wonderful, long-surviving custom which has always fascinated me.  The town is decorated with sycamore boughs, and the maypole is decked with cowslips, and other flowers. People used to believe that a stolen tulip was a lucky thing to carry on the day. 

Almost May

In the woods
The Horned One
is beginning His dance.
Sycamores leaf out
and tulips are ripe
for thieving.
In the verge
between the road and the wall
cowslips
and oxlips are tousled.
Drumbeats are heard
limbering up
from an indefinite direction,
and soon-to-be dancers
have a spring to their step.


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If Angus Would Come!

1/2/2014

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Tigh nam Bodach, Gleann Cailliche - Marc Calhoun

Early on Bride's morn
The serpent shall come from the hole,
I will not molest the serpent,
Nor will the serpent molest me.
On the day of Bride of the white hills
The noble queen will come from the knoll,
I will not molest the noble queen,
Nor will the noble queen molest me.
These must be among the first verses I ever read from the Carmina Gadelica. They are two of many verses which have to do with Bride's Day, or Imbolc. If I'm honest, living here in Colorado is getting me down. Rather than looking forward to spring as I would wish to, I find myself merely dreading another summer that will be too hot and dry, and so I've been struggling to muster enthusiasm for the coming holiday of Imbolc. But a couple of hours ago, something quite small and wonderful happened. I found this:
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He or she was neatly folded between two flakes of hay, in a bale I opened to feed the horses. It felt like a sign. If anybody ever needed a sign, it was me, so I'll take it as so. I already had the beginnings of a poem in my head, but it had been refusing to form. My little serpent muse did the trick, however. So here is my poem.
If Angus Would Come

If young Angus would come
We would drown the filthy plaid of winter
In the speckled cauldron of Jura.

We would search out my bright cloak,
My green cloak, my fair cloak,
My patchwork cloak of pastures and fields.
Oh, if only he would come!

When Angus comes
He will search for me
Guided by the light of a thousand candles.

He will know my abode
By the sark I have hung on the window sill.
It collects the snow, to be wrung as dew
To ease his wounds when he comes.

When Angus comes
The serpent will rise,
And I will rise up as a queen,

As a flaming arrow
Piercing the heart of a crone.
A merciful bolt, forged of silver.
If young Angus would only come!

But when will young Angus come?
Then I can lie down in a bed of ease
Attended by maidens.

It's then I can rise up again
To the sound of burns in spate.
Flowers will spring under our very feet.
If only young Angus would come!


       - Kris Hughes 2014







































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If you enjoyed this post, you might also like The Cailleach Becomes Bride and Visions in meditation - part 1 

Poems for the Season on Imbolc
Poems for the Season of Imbolc
$
8.00    
"Some of the most amazing pagan poetry I’ve ever been blessed to encounter."                                -
              - Sharon Paice MacLeod, author of Celtic Cosmology and the Otherworld, and The Divine Feminine in Ancient Europe


At Imbolc, Brigid, the goddess of poetic inspiration, walks the land.
These poems were composed over many years, and under the influence of different folkloric ideas – particularly that of the juxtaposition of Brigid (or Bride, as we call her in Scotland) and the Cailleach.

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Rhiannon's Dream

17/1/2014

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This poem describes a dream I had maybe seven or eight years ago. It was so full of wonder that I've remembered it quite vividly, although I don't begin to understand its meaning. Recently, a friend who did a Shamanic journey on my behalf urged me to begin working with the goddess Rhiannon. In doing so, I've become convinced that this dream was a gift from Her.
poppies
Rhiannon's Dream

On an evening fine
In a meadow green
Horses graze
And laze and play
Red poppies grow
Among the grass
In the sun
Of a summer's day

Red poppies change
Their shape becomes
Like exotic cranes
While horses play
They rise and flutter
Red butterflies now
As horses wonder
As horses gaze

Red butterflies
Turn now to white
They fly round faces
And light with love
They gently play
As horses stand
In awe of this
At end of day

White butterflies
Become white birds
In flocks of white
They rise and fly
Above the meadow
While horses watch
The magic sight
As evening falls
    - Kris Hughes 2014

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