Go Deeper
  • Home
  • Online Classes
  • Blog
    • Index of Blog Posts
  • Shop
    • Chapbooks >
      • Credne's Hand
      • The Fiery Wheel
      • The Fifth Branch
      • Four Essays
      • Land Songs
      • Lugh Lleu
      • Master Jack
      • My ears are keen
      • Mythology
      • Poems for Imbolc
      • Tadg son of Cian
      • A Tale of Manawydan
      • Urien of Rheged
  • Events

Lost in time

9/11/2018

1 Comment

 
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.

Picture
Poet's Pub - Alexander Moffat 1980
Picture
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, ManannĂ¡n 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.
Picture
Picture
The late Hamish Henderson

    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!

Subscribe
1 Comment
jo link
1/1/2019 01:06:35 pm

oh yes, our humour, humours our humours....so to speak. Paddy Leigh Fermor, Lemmy, then June Whitfield this week... bless them, we follow open-eyed...

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Picture
    Support my work.
    Buy me a cuppa!


    You might like my new facebook group called
    CELTIC MYTHOLOGY

    Archives

    March 2023
    October 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    July 2016
    December 2015
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012


    Categories

    All
    Ancestors
    Animals
    Birds
    Books
    Brigid
    Cailleach
    Depression
    Epona
    Equinox
    Folklore
    Folk Traditions
    Go Deeper Oracle Cards
    Guest Blogs
    Herbs
    Holy Wells
    Horses
    Imbolc
    John Moriarty
    Lugh
    Lughnasadh
    Manannán Mac Lir
    Meditation
    Meditation Cards
    Midsummer
    Moon
    Music
    Mysticism And Visions
    Mythology
    Poetry
    Prayer
    Prayer Cards
    Readings
    Ritual
    Samhuinn
    Shamanism
    Southeast Colorado
    Storytelling
    Trees
    Videos
    Visualisation
    Water


    Blogroll
    Below the Wood
    Clas Merdin

    From Penverdant
    Gorsedd Arberth

    Stone of Destiny
    The
    White Deer Blog

Proudly powered by Weebly