A prayer

[vaneramos]

Sky dancer, you will not come in to me. You call me out. I go out to you and open my face to a thousand tales. You bring me love from every quarter. I cannot close my eyes. You will not let me sleep. You are the great eye, the teeth in the wind, the music and song. You dance the tale of time. Everyone dances with you. You will not leave me alone. I dance with the river, the clouds. I sing with the stone and ice. The trees are dancers, so are the squirrels in the high branches. The ripples are dancers, too.

I have been learning your tales, sitting at the knee of the bright face, the one with coloured fires in its eyes. The eyes tell tales and I lie at her knee dreaming words she places on my lips. I trace a thread of tales across the white-faced stone. I am a spider spinning webs with black thread, drawing listeners ever closer into the nest at the heart of the spiral. Our stories are like venom, and the sleepers dream in three dimensions, with words like mercury in their ears.

You call us to the firelight, away from the crinkling cold of night. You gather us at the heart of the village. We come with our stories of black glass people, the brittle ones, the ones in towers that climb to heaven like they want to make love to god. We come with tales of the tantrum king and his silent people, the ones afraid of knowing anything. Tales of fires and poison, of the thunder seed death cloud. Of dust that spreads poison to an entire generation, that stirs up storms shedding rain when the fields crave sun, and sun when the earth is ready to sleep and cries for snow. Tales of the world pumpkin turned to rind, and the flesh to seed, and the seed to dust.

We sing for the rain of cleansing that never ends, that washes poison out of our fields, and corruption out of our houses. We dance for our bones to be washed with the fire of heaven until our memories fall among the fresh grain and give birth to a new people, wise people who do not shut their ears. Let us all be like mothers. Let the women be fruitful and gentle. Let the men be strong and courageous. Let the women be strong and courageous. Let the men be fruitful and gentle. Let us all honour love, whether it be the love of a mother for her children, or a child for its parents, or a man for his wife, or a woman for her friend, or any of the multitude of loves that a creature may know.

Let us all join the dance, the music, the telling of tales, the sharing of food, the painting and writing and weaving of beauty. Let us know darkness and light, and let us open to them. Let us know sorrow and joy, and not run from them. Let us honour death and birth. Let us embrace the wise and the foolish ones. Let us take the madmen into our circles and join their threads with ours. Let us look for holiness in the fall of a leaf and the drop of water from an icicle.

Comments

[avad.livejournal.com]

speechlessly moved.
SO beautifully written

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I am speechless, too. It took the wind out of me. Now I need a warm cave full of friendly people.

[dakoopst.livejournal.com]

*bowing head quietly*

Though it's Christian cliche, I must say: amen, amen, and amen, my brother.

This is beautiful.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Amen is a thought I can relate to, my brother, my friend. Thank you for sharing with me.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Ian, your kind comment a few weeks ago, about my photos of autumn colour, was on my mind when I took this one.

Ice butterflies, and soon we will have ice flowers again!

Thank you.