Green Summer Country
"The sea turned to plain land, the snow on the mountain disappeared. In my eyes thousands of years fade like dust yet my heart is as before...I thought I had forgotten, but I remember everything" ~unknown, from the Mandarin
I walk there in dreams,
the old summer country,
nave of a worship
where ice dies to green fire,
where we tended the world tree
whose roots wrap around
the well of the word;
where we bound the Great Wolf
with the trust of a god
made one-handed,
in the time when the mistletoe
was too young to swear oaths.
I walk there now, with
snow spirits warmed
in green shadow,
where the deer
sigh and surrender
to the arrow and its prayer,
where the Great Serpent gentled
belts the water around the wide land,
waves married to shore.
Where to eat is to be blessed
to love is to be whole
to suffer is to gain wisdom,
where bees make our wine,
where every leaf
hides the saga of a king.
My feet
wander lost, my throat blisters
when I wake to the Serpent unloosed,
the sea spoiled and untied,
the Wolf's bite tearing the snow
from the mountains. My eyes
hold the dust of a thousand years
yet my heart
is the same.
I thought I had forgotten this;
I've forgotten nothing.
June 2022
posted for earthweal's
Dreaming In Green hosted by Sherry Marr
Notes: The poem references figures from Norse mythology; Ygdrasil, Fenris,Jormungandr,Tyr, the story of Baldur. The transcribed quote at the header I heard last night while watching a serialized Chinese television drama.
Images: The Glenn, 1936, ©Maxfield Parrish Public Domain
Jormangand, the World Serpent © Aleski Briclot via internet Fair Use
