Tag: old ways

  • liminal spaces

    a path in the middle of a dark forest
    Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash
    under lintel and menhir
    to cross on the over
    through grey dolmen to sea

    i flint crimson to mantic
    i print finger to snow
    i stone with bare forehead
    i press to the bone

    sent to drift in the twixt
    times veil rivers to blind

  • under a blood moon

    i cut my lip while
    kissing your lazuli eyes
    under a blood moon
    last night, at least
    a decade ago
    it seems today

    bone pale, you laughed
    as you tossed your
    ebon hair away
    cast it to the stars to
    wash my cut away

    i only wished
    i had listened harder
    before i grew stone
    in sternum and
    memorized the how
    of that song on the
    breeze that night

  • Solstice — an explanation of sorts

    The season of withdrawing is upon us.

    The sun slips lower with each passing cycle and we will soon have the longest night upon us — here, in Minneapolis we will see more than fifteen hours of darkness overnight at solstice, while places like Fairbanks, AK will see closer to eighteen hours of night.

    I’ve decided this year to honor this cycle of nature and reduce my online presence over the days leading up to Winter Solstice, which takes place on December 21 — in accordance with the daylight hours and as my professional career allows (I still need to make money to pay bills, after all).

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  • Cosmology

    I won’t go too deep down the rabbit hole here, but I’ve made it no secret that I have an interest in what I call “The Old Ways”. While no one knows for certain what practices existed in the neolithic, preagricultural period of history, I think there are some things that appear to be universal when observing or investigating nomadic peoples closer to the modern age and we can draw some conclusions based on that in conjunction with what we can tease out about a few thousand years back.

    The records of what was written contemporaneously or kept alive through oral tradition, however biased those records might be, sometimes point to a past that existed before those events were recorded.

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  • wounded

    Photo by Jon Sailer on Unsplash
    chain link silvered with
    scarlet & black tobacco ties
    swaying on the wind

    laced leather around that
    wear-my-hair-long,
    the painted hills still sing

    ever the dancing the ghost
    against a world hellbent
    on feeding the hate machine

  • For better or worse

    standing stones
    Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash

    The old notes I found have gotten my thoughts pointing back in the direction of those kinds of studies again. This is probably obvious to some of you. While it can be difficult to find reliable, scholarly texts on the matter, I find that I learn something new almost every time I read the few texts out there that are supported by scholarship. And there is always those untapped journal articles out there that are less about meeting sales quotas than they are about serious scholarship.

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  • For you

    Photo by Adarsh Kummur on Unsplash

    You’ll find me at moorwanders, following smalltrails and playing at touchstone for the only thing that is real. Here, elder ways draw to base: flame crosses chill, rain mists slick the stone, and the growl of winds between the ways. Here, the animals sing underhill, a call to slumber.

    I know you tire at the mention of Raven, but they are here too.

    The best magic is that which seems not to be magic at all, and it lingers here like it did in the old, doing a lot of nothing much at all: wind waves barley, skies trading slate for blue and then back again, small birds ducking in and out of the tall grass and the lone tree upon the hill. Them, big oak and me as all acorn, resting underneath and waiting.

    For what? you ask.

    Well, if you must need know… for you.

  • Campfire Sessions — 12apr25

    Campfire
    Photo by Ville Palmu on Unsplash

    Back to the campfire…

    It the shadows and glow of the flickering ruddy flames, he looks gaunt, grey, and emaciated as he approaches and sits down. His hair, what remains on his taut pate, is a dirty white and as withered as he — scraggly, sparse and I can see more skin than hair.

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  • rivers wide

    Image of a writing journal and a pencil.
    Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash
    masks we ride rivers wide
    banks staring blank, empty
    ancestors begging forgiveness --
    what have we done?

    slipping night waters
    at the edge of blood tides
    moon mother moon
    what have we done?

    careless, that whispered jetty
    rock dark, broken shore
    still that heart's beating
    what have we done?