Chantress

I

(While she took root, before acquiring wings
as told by a local poet.)

She spoke under rafters,
her throat tuned
by the shallow reed and rock sparrow,
her body risen
from a clay harp, this white rib
of Erin.

She danced on floorboards
that were warped and receding
from their rusted nails.

The sea wind
had loosened their grip
while stregthening her spirit,
pale siren, bonded
servant to The Banshee.

Her hand unlatched the door
and she left the tavern
on a damp morning when
the birds and leaves took wing
heading toward the wave,
casting the fields to Winter.

No one knew where she went
but felt her presence missing --

flint from the tinder box,
said the men,

wild herbs from the hearth,
said the women.

No one knew how she traveled
but some slipped in their dreams
over luggage patched with stickers.

One quite torn, letters fading
revealed half a name,
half a place called Village.

II

( Years after she landed in New York,
a memory told in her own words)


Once In a Greenwich moment,
my hair was the red incense
of Bohemia, wild rose and cedar
scenting the village stage
while I performed.

Words lingered on my tongue
igniting the poem's wick,
that flammable line
of myth or protest.

Sometimes I sat
on a stool feeling more
solidarity with oak
than a crowd of strangers
who were dazed, spellbound
by their own love beads and smoked
cannabis leaf.

Sometimes I stood
looming over souls
who truly felt --

the slow pour of tea
as my voice poured it,

the slant of shoulder bones
read like stone runes
by the sun,

as I lit the star
telling secrets of
the woman and fate.

_______________________________________________

Note -- The painting is called, "Actress" by American artist, William Whitaker.
www.williamwhitaker.com.

Ekao

Invoking the woman who once fell to earth
and ascended as the mother of humankind.

Tonight, the sky lowers its roof
and we dream you fall
through the eaves of heaven
once again...

Oh! Woman, come into the fields
and gather your people.

Fill the jars with water,
the baskets with grain
and lend the tree
a shawl of blossoms.

Oh! Woman, come into the house
and light all rooms.

Burn the reeds bundled
in the corner,

strike the river stones
piled on the shelf,

and ignite the strength
of your family.

Oh! Woman, come and look
into the mirror.
Change what you see --

The man without a boat
to catch his fish,

the bride without a loom
to weave her cloth

and children holding sticks
to rile dust or ants
as they play in the sun.

Oh! Woman ,come and cast your song
into the valley.

Your words fly and land,
feed and echo,

a white flock of birds
scattered along the spine of earth.

How beautiful to watch and listen
as we step back
praying in the shadows.

________________________________________________
Note -- The beautiful image is called "Fetish Out Of Africa" by French artist,
Marie-France Riviere. www.griviere.com/expo2000.


This beautiful portrayal of female beauty in both a tribal and vulnerable sense by Marie-France, inspired me to write a poem about an earth goddess from the Nigeria region.

Ekao is the Virgin female in East African belief; part myth, part religion, who fell from the sky and bore a son who married another woman. They in return, founded human society. Yet, Ekao is seen as the "mother divinity", the one who inspired and helped to perpetuate the creation of life. Associated with her being, are the elements of stone, water and clay. They represent the softness, endurance and growth of life and womanhood. This invocation or prayer, is a calling for her spirit to return, heal the village both spiritually and ecologically, and revitalize the human heart with the ability to believe and dream.

The Goddess Of Death Wishes Otherwise

The Goddess Of Death Wishes Otherwise

And so my season comes early, hills
all polished with its glaze, cauldron-pour
of heavy sleet. They gleam
like the skulls I will scour and stack
along the garden's landscape.

How many will die this year?
Even I don't know that number.
It's hidden in stone, leaf or quill
left bird-fallen where a higher god
might use it to etch
a rosary of blue veins
along my breast, his mortal count
blurred under the skin.

Some village women say
I am given shadow wings like the crow,
but mine are a tangled fray
of roots, ivy or white clover
in design. With them I reap the dust
and hover in this cold sky
undulating songs of death.

I am tired of being that wild harp,
that wash line of lament
on which the soldier's wife
poignantly hangs her heart. So please
banish the Winter moon.
Resuscitate Indian Summer
and as her bottle brush sweeps
away those particles of frost,
let me stay long enough
to love a man and carry his seed
not his migrating soul.
_______________________________________________

Note --- The painting is called, "The Melody of Your Demise" By Linda Berkgvist.

Study Of Slyvia In Blue

Before you place your head
in the oven, hair falling about your neck
like a platinum scarf
you stare at the burner,

blue garland of flames
rising to serve you.

Blue spark, blue wish
blown into Winter's heat,
you think of the tinder box --
the magic fire, the giant dog;

only in your world
it would be a cat
with a clean mouth
and fierce claw
springing from the yew tree
to grant this dark boon.

Cast out the girl
in your husband's hour glass
as her long neck
slips through his hands
turning plain seconds
into bliss, sweet time
she has stolen from from you.

Unlike the soldier
chambered in the blue
forest at twilight,
you need only one wish
to escape death.

Two more
would seem greedy
when you humbly crave
your bridegroom's troth,

his gaze
loving an eyebrow
as much as the lapwing's crest,

his hands
pulling your head back
from this gas cavern, from the edge
of madness, the moon's bleached
hood of bone.

_________________________________________________________

Note -- The painting is called, "Blue Eyes" by artist, Linda Bergkvist, more of
her work can be viewed here, http://www.furiae.com/index.php?view=gallery.

On A Final Day

The sky
is in its mirror-like phase,
silver-coated glass
echoing the distilled grief of dawn.
Somewhere in a garden
of Joshua trees we stand,
marble figments of dream, statues
molded this way by our indifference.
Even as we awaken
the chiseled splendor prevails
and the wasted stone,
heaped ashen like a pile
of breath we should have sparked,
the fluster of excitement

lovers share
despite those hours
which have veiled the clock's face
in shadow, fallen sluggishly
through iron-wrought fingers
that could not grip time
with a purpose. Their weight was transient;
yet, we remained dense, forms of silence
I fear cannot be moved. The beginning
has come too late, but light burns through the glare
fuels the horizon with a star.
______________________________________________________________________


Note -- Picture is called "Romance" by Artist, Linda Bergkvist. Her provocative work can be viewed at this on-line gallery,
http://www.furiae.com/index.php?view=galleryda Bergkvist.

Airmid

(A few days before Samhain.)

The wind unbraids her hair
and lets it wander
into a woolen updfraft, a cloak
she wears near dawn.

One hand carries a pouch
where herbs exhale
their pungent scent,

the other pulls down
a string of stars, a sinew of light
from this holy leg
of October's joumey North.

Slowly, she laces the bag
with her stellar cord and faces
the distant cliff
slightly eroded, casting its stone dice
into the sea.

A toss of blue shale,
a shake of blossomed weeds,
and she gambles on magick
invoking the body to heal
and softly breathe in
the pipe song of spinning leaves, passing souls.
__________________________________________________



Goddess of the Growing Green: Airmid of Ireland
By Erynn Rowan Laurie

Previously published in SageWoman #25, Spring 1994

The Celts honored hundreds of deities throughout the British Isles and Western Europe. A few are known through tales and poetry, but of most, little is known beyond the names, taken from inscriptions in stone. When thinking of Irish healing Goddesses, most minds turn immediately to Brighid, but she is not the only healing Goddess of the Irish. The stories of Airmid are few. She is mentioned only two orthree times in all the translated Irish tales. Airmid is an herbal healer, part of a family of healers among the Tuatha de Danann, one of the groups of Gods and Goddesses of Pagan Ireland. Together with her father Dian Cecht and her brother Miach, a God of surgery, she tended a sacred spring that brought the dead back to life. The tales tell us:
"The slain and mortally wounded were cast into a healing well over which Dian Cecht, his sons Miach and Octriuil, and his daughter Airmed sang incantations, and all were restored to full vigor." [1]

As a healer, Airmid surpassed her father in power, for while Dian Cecht replaced the severed arm of the de Danann king Nuadha with one of silver, she and Miach regenerated the flesh arm to perfect health. The healing charm they recited remains in Celtic folk use even today.

Bone to bone
Vein to vein
Balm to Balm

Sap to Sap
Skin to skin
Tissue to tissue

Blood to blood
Flesh to flesh
Sinew to sinew

Marrow to marrow
Pith to pith
Fat to fat

Membrane to membrane
Fibre to fibre
Moisture to moisture [2]

Folk tradition is powerful, remaining in the memory of the people for generations after the reason for the traditions die away. There may be no explanation, only that "this is the way it has always been done." Such is the power of the growing green. Cut down a rowan tree and a dozen young saplings arise from the stump to take its place.

As the origin of the charm was lost from memory, so the secret of the healing herbs was lost to the people as well. Dian Cecht, jealous because he could not compete with Miach's surgical skills or Airmid's powers of regeneration, killed his son and confused the herbs that grew from his grave so that mortal humans would not share in the power and immortality of the Gods.

After that, Miach was buried by Dian Cecht, and three hundred and sixty-five herbs grew through the grave, corresponding to the number of his joints and sinews. Then Airmed spread her cloak and uprooted those herbs according to their properties. Dian Cecht came to her and mixed the herbs, so that no one knows their proper healing qualities unless [she] taught them afterwards. And Dian Cecht said "Though Miach no longer lives, Airmed shall remain"

Airmid's herbs, spread upon her cloak, were scattered by her father. Yet Airmid still remembers the powers of the herbs, and can teach us their secrets. Through her, we may learn to use and appreciate the sacred power of plants and healing waters. Her medicinal herbs were powerful, offering cures for every part of the body. The symbolic number 365 tells us that, with time, Airmid's herbs can heal all wounds. Airmid's herbs have power throughout the solar year, whether in seed and root, bud and stem, or flower and leaf. Fresh in spring or dried in the dead of winter, the herbs have effect. She works through nature's cycles, and through the energy that connects the body's joints and sinews in lines of power.

Is Airmid, the Goddess of medicinal plants, only a healer of the body? The simple answer is no; the healing power of every green place looms palpably within it. We have but to stand in a grove of trees or listen to the rush of a fern-circled waterfall to feel the weight of our spiritual and emotional wounds begin to lift from our shoulders. The healing power of plants goes far beyond their physical effect on human biochemistry. When we delight in the color and scent of blooming flowers, the heady green scent of pines and cedars, the healing power of Airmid is there. In our cup of honeyed tea, she resides. She dwells in forest and field, and for those of us living in cities, she dwells in the potted herbs of garden shops, the apartment window box, and the stubborn yellow dandelion pushing out of a crack in the sidewalk. The essence of Celtic religion is found in contradictory states, in the neither/nor, the liminal fringe. Airmid is that Celticly odd balance of toughness and delicacy that manifests in the blackberry -- bright, fragile blossom and tangling thorn. She creates life from death, bringing healing from the grave.

A Composer In The Park

Recently, I received a letter from my French friend and artist, Marie-France, describing her surroundings in Paris. She commented that Spring had come to this historic park located five minutes from her condo. And this place was also noted for its beautiful trees and artistic visitors. One of those visitors in the past had been the famous composer/singer -- Gilbert Becaud. She inquired if I knew any of his songs or had ever heard of him. Unfortunately, I had not and was a little embarassed by my lack of knowledge. So, Google came in very handy.

I was fasinated by what I discovered. He was known as Monsieur 100000 volts for his energetic performances and charisma. He frequented the music halls and cafes of Paris during the 1950's and 60's. His melodies were very popular with the French audience and extended their popularity to the US, the UK and other European countries. His most famous songs included "Nathalie" and "Et Maintenant". I was drawn immediately to the lyrics and whimsical beat of the first one. Nathalie is a song of love ripening between a Russian guide and her adoring tourist.


As a poet, I wrote a scene from Monsieur Becaud's older life. It opens with him strolling in a city park, still dapper and filled with the vitality of music. He passes by some old men playing petangue, a game of lawn bowling, who discuss his presence there. They contemplate his reason for the afternoon walk and lead into the possibility of a composer searching for his lost muse. Details like red geraniums and a gold foil wrapper provide a sudden flash back to the day he first met Nathalie. It was a cold day in Red Square where the domed towers of the Krelim guarded the plaza with regal silence. She was not a guide as suggested by his song, but a blonde girl who simply turned around to ask him, a convenient stranger, to light her cigarette. The unlit smoke was held like a piece of chalk, ready to sign their encounter with red sparks of heat, (ellipses of fire), that would pause the scene and leave him thinking about what might happen next. Flirtation dominated the moment but words were omitted and things were just assumed. The flame generated between them and that flare emitted by the cigarette, became points of suspension inferring more, this romance would continue. Their meeting would be a fateful one. And in the end, it led to the creation of his beloved and imaginative chanson, Nathalie.


COMPOSER IN THE PARK

Devant moi marchait Nathalie
Elle avait un joli nom, mon guide
Gilbert Becaud


Along Spring's plaza of trees
he still walks
charged by volts of sunlight
and old music hall tunes.

He wears a white shirt
with a marlin-blue tie
as he moves past
some hunched men
bowling on the lawn.

They grumble
about the game and then look up
questioning their neighbor's
afternoon stroll.
Some insist he is here
to simply exercise.
others say he is searching
for traces of Nathalie,
the Russian muse
he immortalized
in his lyrics --- years ago.

As the players gossip,
their pétangue feet
relaxed with the break,

he notices the red
geraniums blooming
near a stone fountain
and the candy wrapper
left glittering on a bench.

No chocolat
but its gold foil
flashes to the domed roofs
of the Kremlin and the curling
glamour of a girl's hair.

She turns around
and asks for a light, her cigarette
poised like slender chalk
to sign the cold air
and their encounter
with ellipses of fire....the rest
of the picture drawn
later in a café and his song.
________________________________________

Epigram is translated from the French song, Nathalie, meaning – Nathlie walked in front of me. She had a pretty name , my guide.


The art is by French artist, Marie-France Riviere, entitled, "Au revoir Paris" See more of her work here, www.griviere.com/expo2000.

Click on Nathalie to hear the song sung in French with lyrics visually shown in both French and English.