Three Wheels

 

 

 

 

 

Three Wheels

 

 

 

I dream the ghost;

an old woman who sits staring,

tendril-wrapped in the cold wet

wood with her soft face

washed away.

 

I dream the ritual;

an old woman who pedals

fast, pedals frantic, hunched

simian over three thin wheels

meant for a child.

I see the flooding quarry

and what they dig there that

 must not be found. The old woman

pedals madly, seeing all that goes

around and round.

I dream the Völva;

a grey woman who throws back

her unmade face and howls in runes,

traveling Time with red eyes

she calls from night.

I hear the pack's full cry loping

as one; to rend, to tear, to save

the secret moon before

she can be dug

from the water and sold.

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

I have written this roughly in the cadralor form, tho I have taken a few liberties with it. 

 

 

 

Process Note: Völva: "A Völva is a female Shaman in Old Norse culture, religion, and mythology..A Völva practiced three different kinds of indigenous magic within Old Norse society: Seiðr, or shamanic ritual, was the ceremonial weaving of a new or different future..Spá, or prophecy, was the art of foreseeing the fates that were being continuously woven into existence by the Norns.. Galdr, or incantation, was the art of singing or chanting for the purposes of changing or influencing an outcome..." ~Shieldmaiden's Sanctum

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images, both via internet, attribution unknown.   Fair Use.

Red And Gold

 

 

 

 

 Red And Gold

I.

Under my feet bright bodies

of leaves, mast from the oak, crunch

of all the discards of summer, fire's coming

crackle; percussion accompaniment

to sweet smoke of raked heaps burning

where you stand smiling,

match in hand.

II.

Peridot green under amethyst clouds

the after-storm sun bent the grass back

with sudden heat, as you bent my bones

with one touch, onyx eyes

closing on summer's fire

while the last light left brushed the waterfall's

singing to red steam.

III.

Around my skin a white pelt of

frozen water, my remembering numbing as wind,

 howling hard as a cast-out wolf ten states

from its pack, too old to fight

too full not to cry,

 under a sharp sickle moon

that sees nothing at all.

IV.

Rolling wheels on warm red dirt

over the creek, around the bends where 

trees hide the climb, mask the descent,

 shaking their gravid buds in the rage of air

pushing me, pulling me,

past the point where words

could make me stop.

V.

Every season dies around me,

every leaf, every white-muzzled wolf

in my wilderness, each golden October

burning red under the match

til nothing is left but the journey

I reverse night

after night in my sleep.

October 2021

posted for Meet the Bar: Cadralor plus Nobel

at dVerse Poets

Images: Autumn Leaves, Lake George, NY, 1924 ©Georgia O'Keefe   Fair Use

Red Dirt Road After Spring Rain, author unknown, via internet.    Fair Use