Settling Bones

spanning a moment of change

✾ Oral recitation at the bottom of the post ✾

The way was opened in a pile of fresh ash - bones of alder wood, and I prayed.

I have been so lonely for so very long without the company of my old companions. The stretch of time without them had been so great that I’d nearly forgotten their names. But, they came with the Eastern Wind and in the January fog and slowly, memory of their power awakened itself in the lifetimes-long knowing of my innermost soul and outermost being. With this knowing also came fear - fear of a life without them; fear of their wrath.

But, the way was opened in a pile of ash, bones burnt to a dust, Her Holy place. And so the work begins.

Courting, tending, and respecting the power of the ones older than any gods, the primordial forces which move through all things, which take form as elements, elements that weave themselves into all other matter an a variety of patterns, completely unique in every iteration.

It is these forces whose mercy I live by: the dirt under my fingernails, the Fire engulfing forests not unlike my place of dwelling (that did, in fact engulf the very place of my dwelling 125 years ago), the mist saturating deadwood and leaves, emitting the smell of fecund potential.

I fear of a life without them: I fear a dead existence, for I have tasted that life and discerned that is void of life. I’d rather die than be without them, for that would at least be in service of life. To be with them means to be in relationship, to walk with, to listen to, and to learn about.

I have no intent on simply bowing to forces when I can also walk beside them, merging for even a moment - a spark of ecstasy between two alive ones, recognition of existence through the other. Why only bow when I can also become? - Become the silent song of the deep night, become the river that might take me, the delicate fire on which I depend. The Forces are not bound by death and life in their ongoing dance with each other, two halves meant always to be whole. The Forces predate the first spark of what we call life, and the first occurrence of what we call death.

I know this because I was there. I was there before life and before death, or rather the Forces which make me were there and the scent of this time wafts on the wind that They carry every once in a while. When I drop my bones in to a nurse log and become moss and fungi and buzzard and worm, I will remember more about this time. For now, I call out to the Forces from my place of ash and bone and ask them to be kind to me while they show me their teeth and while we find old rhythms together again.

SETTLING BONES