‘guided by Barinthus to whom the waters and the stars of heaven were well known. With him steering the ship we arrived’
Vita Merlini
What stars will you navigate by when they have fallen from the sky?
Where is North when there is no North Star?
How will the swans fly?
When your boat is stuck on a turning oar in the blackest of midnights
shall I tie my blindfold with a sailor’s knot?
Trust your sightless eyes?
Speak the words that have never been heard this side of the sunrise?
Place my payment shiny and cold in your spitless
mouth that never lies?
Your cloak of stars ragged torn will you wrap around my shoulders tight
as you swear by dead sea-gods we will arrive
on your boat that flies
on the wings of a swan where the sea is filled with the Northern Lights?
Find the frost-dark isle of my mysterious god where the sun
escapes the sunrise?
Where the living are dead and the dead alive and the blind no longer blind
will we find the oar, the compass, the stars, bring them back
with the starlight?
*This image is the Six of Arrows – Transition – from the Wildwood Tarot.
I re-read this several times with an increasing sense of it resonating with the Deep,
and of answers echoing back an affirmation.
Wonderful Lorna!