Connection

Oh, the lust I had 

for that man of magic!

He was drawn to me too.

Power and Karma fused.

But the rite disappointed ...

and we lived far apart.

Email, MySpace, facebook.

Years of friendship growing

to include our life partners.

Confidences shared

in deep understanding.

Workings across distance.

And, just occasionally,

an affectionate exchange

turning ever-so-slightly flirty.

For Friday Writings #131 at Poets and Storytellers United, we are invited to write about re-purposing something – or someone. So I couldn't help thinking of this particular magical collaborator, a one-time lover who became, by mutual choice, a longstanding friend instead. We were undoubtedly bonded by a powerful karmic tie; it seems we initially mistook the nature of the attraction. Or perhaps – as my time in his country was short, but our connection both fated and necessary – our guides made sure it would be almost impossible for us to resist interacting!

Dragon and Mountain

I asked my dear friend Phill, a digital artist, to create for me a sacred image to signify, formally, a role I’d been given. A man overseas invited me into a tradition of dragon magic with communities in various countries – an honour. I loved and admired him; I already worked with dragons; I agreed. Each locality was designated a ‘tor,’ mine named for the town where I live. 

I requested a design suggesting our local mountain: viewed from my location, ia high, pointed summit on the left, then two humps descending to the right. I saw it shaping the word ‘Am,’ for Being. Asked what colours I'd like, I chose green and purple, the colours of the Women’s Movement. (I've since learned that there is a sacred Indgenous women's site on the mountain .)

Phill put this image inside a sphere. He added – unasked, but inspired – a seven-pointed star in the background, symbol of the Faery realm, in a form that could be viewed as loosely woven fabric or gently radiating light.

The magical man’s dragon tradition grew warlike. It was metaphorical; even so, I rejected that identification. The dragons I knew were benevolent. I couldn’t, in conscience, establish a branch of his tradition here. I resigned. He saw this as betrayal. 

He had overcome many challenges, requiring a warrior’s mind-set, so I didn’t seek to change him but I wouldn’t join him. He cut off all communication with me.

I decided to keep the symbol I'd designed, reclaiming it as a statement of my own being, my own connection to the mountain (which I have felt from the first encounter).

The artist, my soul-brother, died: cancer, sudden and quick. From his hospital bed, at my request, witnessed by his family, he gave me permission to save all his digital art to do whatever I like with. I've no particular plans; I just didn’t want it lost if his website lapsed. 

Later, it happened that I was one of a group of white Australians given by a local Indigenous elder the freedom of this land, Githabul land. It includes the mountain.

sometimes at twilight

I look up at the mountain

and glimpse a dragon –

its shadowy back a swathe

along the darkening ridge

Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #120: A Touch of Formality

Parting Company

How quietly we come to the end — do we? —

of a karmic connection through many lives.

This time, we loved each other: with the body briefly, 

with mind and heart and soul in the years since.

But now he wants to build monuments, fight battles …

would do me honour as long as I supported.

He carries the blood of Cherokee warriors 

and Slavic shamans. He resonates with Norse deities 

and Viking axes. I follow a different path. 

 

The heritage, genetic or magical (mine Celtic / Hindu,

while I’m drawn to Egyptian and Graeco-Roman gods) 

probably doesn’t matter. It’s where we choose to go

this time around which shapes us; what we choose to do.

Even when we performed the Rite, he was after power;

I did it for lust. But I loved him too, not for the wild man, 

the joker, the adventurer, but for a core of tenderness

I saw within, and for his truth-telling. I don’t know why

he came to love me too, but he did. Perhaps for the same.

‘That’s your teacher,’ his angels told him, the moment 

when he first saw me. ‘Don’t let him get the upper hand,’ 

mine said two weeks earlier, predicting our meeting 

when we were still strangers, unaware of each other.

I didn’t forget the advice. Perhaps he did. Now

he thinks I have nothing more to teach him. He wants 

to instruct me. ‘You’ll be looking for me,’ he says, ‘When

they come at you in that final battle.’ ‘Dear one,’ I reply,

‘do you not know, Love is the greatest weapon?’

We are texting from different continents. ‘My circle,’ 

he says, ‘collapses if you walk away.’ I tell him I cannot stay,

will not, to be seen as a party to violence, and add:

‘Like a cat, I usually go my own way.’ He says: ‘Goodbye.’

Sharing this one, on 29 November 2024, with Friday Writings #155 at Poets and Storytellers United. 

Imaginary Friend

Imaginary Friend

Shadows fall through water.

I say to the you in my mind:

We are at October. For you

it’s heavy with autumn. Here,

Spring is giving us, again,

increasing light. 

But, for now,

the light is filtered. 

It has been raining

on the clouded river

towards the end of the day.

Shadows increasingly fall.

Where are you at present?

Traversing autumn

while I murmur of spring,

do you perchance also

watch light and shadow

rise and fall through a river? 

Are you even alive any more,

traveller? Where do you now

wander, and why?

I watch the River Tweed

and think of the Guadalupe

where once we lingered.

It was almost Beltane

(in April). I had two that year:

one there, one here. Now

as Beltane looms again

in October, I am doubly alone.

I think of you, and I wonder.

Photo by Glenn Claire on Unsplash

This picture is of neither the Tweed nor the Guadalupe, but Rock River in Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests, USA. However, the image suits the poem.

 

Note: There are two Tweed Rivers (that I know about). Mine is in Australia, not Scotland.

Written in response to Weekly Scribblings #90: October at Poets and Storytellers United.