Thursday 25 January 2018

Storm Fallen Cedar




Storm Fallen Cedar



It was the storm
that took her
at the last;
while we nestled
deeper in our beds,
unsleeping,
but grateful all the same
for the simple joy
of shelter.
In the smallest hours
Heaven opened
overhead
and poured upon us
an onslaught of
wild wind,
with rain so cold
it was almost snow
in its sharpness.
Just before the dawn
it peaked in power,
finally enough,
as it
whipped
like a scourge
against her long aged, grey,
elephantine skin
and, though her sisters
held their vigil nearby,
she gently gave way,
and fell,
prostrate upon the earth
from which she came,
embraced by the sacred soil
of our little
graveyard.
Was she tired
of her long watch upon the hill?
Holding her gaze
over the forest, the family
and now the friars,
for three hundred
of our human years
(Whatever kind of reckoning
Trees make of time
I do not know,
and they do not tell
in our tongue at least.)

So much had passed
beneath her branches
famines, feasts, families
and finally, friars, all played
their part
measuring her time,
each in their own way.
That morning,
emerging into light,
we heard the news
in shock;
the ripple of her passing
echoing
in awe and prayer both,
a sadness felt in brother, bird, and beast
for those still enough to hear.

Today,
I made my pilgrimage
to pay my respects
as she lies in state,
our sacred sister,
eldress of this land.
Finding her broken body
dissolving already,
her ancient green soul
flown.
Her long hidden heartwood
now exposed,
still raw and soft yet,
open to the breeze,
that touched her broken branches
with the sacred sprinkling
of the rain.

So often before
I had blessed her,
and given her my brother’s bow
in passing by,
and so been blessed in turn
by her simple stately
being.

My hands, resting upon her trunk,
felt the difference
today.
No pulse,
no inner warmth,
no great deep
breathing in her
root,
trunk,
branch,
bark.
It brought sadness too,
but also the joy of knowing
that in every death
something withdraws,
is freed,
leaves.
For all that live
sing their own soul song
arising from Divine love,
and in someway,
at the end will
return their essence
as gift borrowed for a while,
until the new creation
allows resurrection seed
to finally fully bloom
in all beings.

I was not the first
to grieve her though,
For all around the tracks
and trails of those she sheltered showed;
the fleet of foot, feathered, furred
they too had felt her passing,
and it seemed had held their funeral rites
ever before us.

And then,
I looked up from my troubled thoughts
and found my gaze held
by a Stag who watched,
wary and wonderful and wild,
from the forest’s edge.
Both of us, in our own way,
guardians of this land.
Both of us mourning
the passing of our eldress,
each in our own way.
Both of us simply there
in the brotherhood of all being.
And I think, in that moment
we were blessed,
and blessed each other too,
in our common grief and trust
that all that live upon this earth will die,
and all that dies will live again in Love.
Then, bowing gently, we withdrew
to forest and to friary each,
aware of other 
and of something
beyond other, 
I, for my part, call grace,
(Whatever kind of reckoning
Deer make of grace
I do not know,
and they do not tell
in our tongue at least.),
grace that had led us both
to be there
at that time, together,
in mourning,
for our storm fallen sister,
the great and ancient being
we simply call
Tree.