Storytime: Wayland’s Tale

October 29, 2014 / sarahsadie

Small candle, Mind-Forge, help me fly

Through thorn, to World Tree nine worlds high,

What Was, Is, Will Be:

Three Sisters stand by me.

Light a candle, my love, a small mindfire to prick the growing night. For all this starts with a story. Not a pretty or happy story, but one that is True…

Once not so long ago, or very long ago indeed, or maybe not until next week…

there was a god who wanted to try his luck as a man. It happens now and again, and there’s always a story to come of it.

This particular man had two brothers, and the three of them were fortunately enough (and that is very fortunate indeed, bad luck or good) to marry three sisters. Nine years they all lived happily enough, and then the sisters flew, called off by their father to far fields of battle. Nine years have we been together, nine years will we be apart, they told their mates. Never seek us, never search us out. We will come back to you. And off they flew, crying and calling to war.

Now the man’s two brothers could not abide to live with their grief and solitude, and they urged the young man to come with them and chase their wives, bring them back to home. But the young man trusted his wife to come back as she said she would, and he urged his brothers to have patience. This they could not, and so they said good bye to the young man, and went to seek their wives. With one thing and another, those two quickly met their deaths, for you cannot chase after what has flown away from you and ever come to any good.

The young man knew nothing of this, however. He turned to the hills, and found within them ore and jewels, and month by month and year by year he practiced a lonely craft as smith. It wasn’t long until he became so skilled at his art, that his reputation spread throughout the land and his small house filled up with treasures of his own making.

Now it happened…

that a neighboring King heard of the renown and reputation of the Smith. How could he not, when rumors ran across the country? No smith so skilled as he, travelers told the King. And none so wealthy, either. All by himself he lives, just him, alone, in a house full of gold rings, chains, and hammered armor all of utmost skill and craft.

The King could not forget this Smith, this no one noble, once he had heard these tales. Who is this man, he asked, to have more wealth than I do? Am I not king? And for whom does he do this work, for whom does he hammer the gold and iron, if not for the king? By rights I should have him here beside me.

So the King gathered twelve of his strongest soldiers in the hall guard and together they traveled to the Smith’s small house, intending to ambush him and bring him back to the King’s hall. Luck was with them. The Smith was out hunting when they arrived. The house was empty of any person, but the stories were proved true, it was filled with gold buckles, rings, ornaments and armored magnificence. The men had time to arrange themselves in hiding.

And the King, looking around, had time to take the most beautiful ring of all and stash it in his pocket.

As it turned out…

they didn’t have long to wait. The Smith returned successful, a bear over his shoulders. In no time the thirteen had overpowered him, and without delay they tied him up and took him back to King’s great hall, his realm and home. Once there, to ensure the prisoner would not escape (for he was very strong), the King ordered his men to hamstring and hobble the Smith. Then they locked him away by himself, on an island close by. It was the Smith, his forge and anvil, a chest to keep the metals he would work, a simple bed, and very little else.

The ring he stole, the King gave to his only daughter. To his young sons he gave nothing, for he had no other stolen goods to give.

Can you imagine, now…

how the days and nights stretched on for the prisoner. Nothing but the sound of surf and seagull, the roar of the forge, the clink of his hammers. Wounds slow to heal, both outer and inner, oh my yes. Yet in his pain, his grief, his anger, he didn’t stop work. And out of that crucible, all his jeweled ornaments, all his fanciful masterpieces, went now to the King.

How long did this last? Some months? Years? How should such mortals as we, free and yet untested, measure time’s reach for one who is captive, for one who has been a god? But the Smith would have his revenge.

For as you might guess,one day…

the king’s two sons took it into their heads to row out to their prisoner. They were curious boys, and they knew the rumors of the chest of gold and other metals, they’d heard whispers of the jewels he kept to work his magic on. And after all, what gifts had they received? Did they just want to look, or were they hoping together to trick the smith, or overpower him, and steal his wealth? They didn’t tell me, my lovelies, if they were.

The Smith, healed on the outside by now, at least, welcomed them in and agreed they should see the wonders contained in the chest he kept by the forge. Eagerly, the two leaned over. And as they did, their prisoner brought down the lid with such force it severed their heads from their bodies at once. Oh, he made a clean job of it. The bodies he buried under the dirt floor of his cell. But the heads he had use for. Taking the two skulls, he veined and lined them with gold, fit fine jewels into the eye sockets, and sent the two goblets—rare beauties—to the King as a most precious gift. Delighted, the King promised they should toast the princes, when his sons returned from their bear hunt.

But you haven’t forgotten the King’s daughter, surely?

She who was gifted the Smith’s ring had broken the jewel. Worried her father would find out, she rowed out to the cell just as her brothers had, to ask him to fix it, a favor. Her he welcomed more warmly, with spiced wine. And the stories are not so clear, my dears and darlings, if that wine was drugged, or if the drink only softened her smile. But here is the truth of it: when she rowed home, the princess was carrying the Smith’s child. She might have been able to hide her broken ring, but a baby she never could. Weeping, she told her father the King what had happened.

Now the Smith flew free, for he had in the long years of captivity and anger made wings for himself, and hovering above the shocked King his enemy and captor, he admitted, laughing grimly, all he had done. He revealed the goblets’ deep secret, the fate of the princes. And he claimed the son the princess carried, and laid a charm of protection upon both her and the babe, so that the King must house and feed them, until the Smith, a god once more, came back to claim them both for his own.

And the King, broken and bereft, admitted his folly and too late regretted his acts. For the Smith’s triumph over him was utterly complete.

Keep the fire lit, a while, my loves, and get you to bed. I won’t be sleeping this night, and how the cold comes on.

And so the first debt is paid, the first promise kept.

It is.

The Thirteen Vanic Virtues

October 22, 2014 / sarahsadie

“Why did you change your name?” people ask, when they see the name on my book’s cover is different than the one I use in here.

I had a hundred and one reasons for changing my writing name but (attention, Facebook) none of them are nefarious. And the answer I give depends on the day, my mood, and the phase of the moon. They’re all true. It was a change coming for years and it was a moment’s decision.

“Why didn’t you go all the way and change your legal name, then?”

To this there is only one answer, but it stands up to all 101 on the other side and balances them: my husband asked me not to, and I adore my husband.

So I walk the world divided, and that provides the tension that sings through me, my poems, and keeps my pulse quick. I’m hardly alone. Writers and pagans are two communities who know all about pseudonyms, pen names, craft names.

Years ago I met a Sadie who has been a fundamental influence on me. Recently I’ve been thinking about her again:

Sadie and Maud

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed at home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine-tooth comb.

She didn’t leave a tangle in.
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chits
In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie had left as heritage
Her fine-tooth comb.)

Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.

I discovered this poem when I myself was… in college. And that may be why I read it not so much as a diatribe against education as an argument that the quality of one’s engagement with life has more to do with attitude than privilege. Maud had the privilege and played out the script, and look where she is at poem’s end. Sadie got nothing, and yet she leaves a rich legacy behind her…and had a good time in the meantime, by the sound of it.

Reading that poem at twenty, I decided a fine-tooth comb sounded like a fine way to live. But…what comprises such a comb? Where shall we find the thing, and how shall we know it?

And what do we do if we temporarily lose it?

I found myself remembering that fine-tooth comb again this week, as I’m reading excerpts from Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft (New World Library, 2003). Here’s an extended passage on the figure of the Wanderer:

…This is the time in life when a person is most intensely in search of her deepest self, a self she knows she will not find reflected back to her from within the familiar arenas of her merely human culture. She searches for the seeds of her destiny in the more diverse, wild, and mysterious world of nature. She no longer conforms to nor rebels against society. She chooses a third way. She wanders, beyond the confines of her previous identity.

The Wanderer crosses and recrosses borders in order to find something whose location is unknown and unknowable. She will conclude she has found it not by its location in a certain place or by its matching a prior image, but by how it feels, how it resonates within her upon discovery. She doesn’t know where or when or how clues will appear, so she wanders incessantly, both inwardly and outwardly, always looking, imagining, feeling. In her wandering, she makes her own path.

The Wanderer discovers her unique path by perceiving the world with imagination and feeling. She senses what is possible as well as actual. She sees into people and places and possibilities, and she cultivates a relationship with the invisible realm as much as with the visible. She is in conversation with the mysteries of the world, on the lookout for signs and omens. She attend especially to the edges, those places where one thing merges with another, where consciousness shifts and opens, where the world becomes something different from what it initially appeared to be.

Plotkin’s Wanderer sounds a lot like a “livingest chit,” doncha think? And maybe, just maybe, what I’m writing my way towards in here is a Theology of the Livingest Chit.

By definition, there aren’t too many maps in this work I’m embarked upon. The Northern gods I’m tangled up with don’t set down rules to obey…but they do espouse virtues. Traditionally, these are

Courage
Truth
Honor
Fidelity
Hospitality
Discipline
Industriousness
Self-Reliance
Perseverance

The nine Norse virtues are all honorable ideals but honestly they never fit me very well. Trying to bend myself to that list feels, well, like a slog. That probably doesn’t say anything very good about me, but there it is. I realize this morning this could be because these virtues are community oriented and I am at heart a solitary. They seek to weave a group together into a village or town or other workable society and I live at the far edge. My true home is not…the home. (Which is, yes, another source of creative tension for someone currently in the role of at home parent.)

But I have discovered another set of virtues…

Some of you will know the Northern gods are divided up into two groups: Aesir and Vanir. The Aesir are the ones most people know (thank you Marvel): Odin, Thor, Heimdall, Baldur, Tyr, Frigga…They tend to be sky gods, gods of justice and community. The Nine Virtues are Aesir virtues, for the most part.

The Vanir, on the other hand, are closer to the land, the seasons, the magics of earth. (And yes, I am grossly generalizing here…there is much subtlety in the system that I’m choosing not to go into in this space.) The Vanir deal a little more in the wild and fey. Frey, Freya, Njord are all Vanir…and so, by most contemporary accountings, is the Smith, Wayland.

And, I just discovered, searching online, they have their own set of virtues. Originally the list was twelve, but I split up Courage and Passion, which seem to me related, but separate:

For the original list, created by Nicanthiel Hrafnhild and Svartesol, see this link. I have slightly edited their list of Virtues and reworked the descriptions of each. (Author’s note: Svartesol is Nornoriel Lokason, whose more recent writings can be found here at Patheos Pagan at Ride the Spiral. And here is his official website.)

The Thirteen Vanic Virtues

Beauty
The pursuit of beauty and elegance in thought, form and speech, and the valuation of beauty as worthy in itself.

Courage
The strength of will to see a course of action through. The ability to face difficulty and danger.

Passion
Zeal, vigor; wholehearted zest for life.

Even-mood
Harmonious and balanced thought and action; tranquility, calm, serenity.

Openness
The quality of being receptive to the world around one, non-judgmental. To listen deeply.

Wildness/Ecstasy
Music and dance; the nurturing of inner wildness and radical innocence, being “fey”

Land-rightness
The recognition of nature and the environment as worthy of respect, care and reverence.

Love
The all-encompassing force which expands outward: love for family, for kin, for humanity, for all beings.

Frith
The peace and goodwill between people bound together; loyalty and the keeping of one’s word.

Giving
The binding of two parties into one common bond, generosity and hospitality.

Joy
The ability and willingness to surrender to overwhelming grace, the ability to feel happiness in the moment.

Faith/Piety
The trust that the Gods exist and are worthy of our worship, and Their ways worth following.

Brother(ahem, Sister)hood
The recognition that we – humans, animals, plants, spirits – are all part of the grander scheme of life,
and we share a common heritage, as children of the Earth.

So there it is. I think the Vanir have provided me my fine-tooth comb. At least for a while. This list connects me to myself, my true home (which may be no home?), and this earth that continually spins out from under my feet, leaving me dizzy.

Meanwhile, over my desk I’ve taped this up:

Do no harm.
Take no shit.
Be a “livingest chit.”

As they say at the end of church service every weekend, May it be so.

Freya, by Igor Alexis Osorio Solis

Joy at the Breakfast Table

October 8, 2014 / sarahsadie

I went out to my favorite trail to run again, Pheasant Branch in Middleton, a three mile loop that takes me through both the prairies and the woodlands of Southern Wisconsin. I know every turn and twist, which helps me see the minute changes from week to week as the seasons progress.

This connection to a specific place, as well as the running, grounds me.

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A week ago, three sandhill cranes flew right over my head, belling their prehistoric music, maybe on their way to find the bigger flock they’ll migrate with. I don’t believe in coincidence. The card for JOY in my tarot deck shows three cranes dancing, and my jogged mind said to me, You better write about this.

Joy in the parents with their now-grown chick, headed back to join their community. What is more archetypal than that?

***

Not every dance a family does is quite so joyful. My oldest is thirteen now and suddenly my used-to-be-morning child is slugging pretty hard into his bed. No matter that his alarm goes off at 5:30, the past couple of mornings he’s tumbled downstairs, scarfed breakfast…and needed a ride to school because he missed the bus and it’s too late to walk.

“This is your problem to solve,” I holler up at him. “I’m not going to drive you to school every day.”

“I’ll skip breakfast!” he yells from upstairs. “I’ll skip lunch! I deserve to be punished!!”

Change is hard for my kid.

There’s the savvy old saying, You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. This is pretty practical advice for parents. Unless you give birth to a mule.

My kid is something of a mule. When he gets thirsty, I know from long experience I can’t lead him to the water. He’ll just balk. Instead, I have to nod my head casually and say, “I hear tell there’s water over thataway.”

I’d like to solve all his problems for him…but he resists that, and I know deep down he is right to resist it. He’s gotta figure it out for himself. Each of us does. My job may be, more or less, to keep a little space clear at home to give him the place and the quiet he needs to become himself in the world.

***

I’ve been sitting on this essay for a week, because there’s something about it that felt unfinished, half-realized. And I think, reading it over again, that it’s right here, in the acknowledgment of my own limits. This strange little piece is not just about one mother and son relationship. Maybe this is the best we can do for each other, ever: to keep a little space clear in all our relations to allow family, friends, colleagues, to be and become themselves. I can’t solve your grief. I can’t tell you how to fix your life. I can’t know you, ever, fully. But I can give you room. And I can help to define the boundaries of that space by listening closely, deeply, to your voice.

If we could look at each other and promise, You can be yourself with me, it’s okay, what a gift that would be. What a revolution.

***

While I was driving my kid over to school, he said angrily, “Maybe I need to start setting my alarm for 3 a.m.”

“Well you know,” I said, eyes remaining on the road, “I don’t think the alarm is working. Maybe it’s already set too early.”

“Hey–yeah,” he said. Sometimes there’s grace. Sometimes a person is receptive to a new idea. We’ll see how it goes tonight.

***

Meanwhile, after the kids have gone to school I light a candle
and search out Wayland in my notebooks.

He’s reading a copy of The Anvil’s Ring and says absently,
Did you know they’re still trying to figure out
the Ulfbehrt swords? He chuckles, shaking his head.

Hey, I say. I could use a little direction here.
This hasn’t been an easy season.

But I should know better by now.

He doesn’t even look up, just smiles to himself.
I hear there’s water over yonder. If
you’re thirsty. Follow those cranes.

***

One week later…my son walked to school this morning, and was probably late getting there. He’ll figure it out. Yesterday the three cranes were closer to the trail when I jogged by. You’re still here, I said. The tallest one looked at me. Of course. You haven’t published that essay yet.

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Storytime: Spiritual Geography as Story

September 19, 2014 / sarahsadie

Map with Dragons (courtesy of Shutterstock.com)

First we draw the map.

Then we ask, who lives there?

Then we ask, who goes there?

Sometimes the map is a story.

Here is a Story, to be told when the night grows long:

Once there was a woman who every day walked a well-worn path between her house and the town center, taking her basket of work and wares to sell or trade. Her path led through a woods, but was so well-used that where she walked was quite well lit and without hazard.

One afternoon, however, she tripped on an unseen stone and fell off the path, hard, to the ground. For a moment she lay stunned on the forest floor. As she lifted herself to a sitting position, head ringing, she saw all her goods scattered around, broken and shattered, her basket torn asunder and smashed in. “Oh no,” she cried. Her work was for naught, broken and destroyed. But it was clear there was no time for crying. The woods were growing fast dark with night and, having fallen, she could no longer see the path.

“If I’m to get home, I’d better be doing it,” she said to herself. Up she rose, to make her way back as best she could but thorns caught at her clothing, tearing at it and shredding it. The sharp branches snagged at her face and hands. Disoriented by the fall, the dark, the stinging thorns, she could make no easy or quick progress, but held her hands up to protect herself from the briars and moved forward through the dark as best she could. It took some time.

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By the time she emerged, she was left with only a simple shift. The rest of her clothes had fallen away, snagged on the bushes and briars. She looked around, bruised, bleeding lightly and tired. The moon had risen in the sky, a full moon, giving her light to see by. She found herself on the shore of a lake so large she could not see across. The sand was smooth and white in the moonlight. She realized how quiet the night was, now that she was out of the thorns. The only sound was the water, gently lapping at the shore in small ripples and waves. Looking to left and right, she saw the beach was quite a small clearing. The woods came right down to the water to her left and right, and there was no path to be seen. She sighed, “If I’m to swim, I’d better be doing it.” Shrugging, she stripped off the shift she wore and entered the water, naked.

It was a calm night, and the water flowed around her easily. She was surprised to find that the swimming, although it tired her, was not difficult. As she moved farther from the shore, she became aware of a strange light rising up from beneath her in the water, eerie blue and green. It scared her a little, and she determined to swim past it as quickly as possible. But swim as she might, she could not move beyond the light flickering up from under.

“Oh very well,” she thought to herself. “If I’m to dive, I’d better be doing it.” So, tucking her legs up, down she went.

The light emanated from a cave on the lake’s bottom, and from that same cave came a sweet, unearthly singing. As she neared it, she was surprised to find she could breathe in this new element. Landing on the sandy floor outside the cave, well lit by the light that spilled out around the entrance, she walked in.

She saw first a large black pot, sitting on a fire, though how there could be fire at the bottom of the lake she did not know. The flames burned green, then blue. Someone was stirring the pot, she saw, and lifting her eyes, she saw a woman returning her gaze and smiling. It was this person that was singing as she stirred the giant black cauldron. It was impossible to tell if she was young or old. The light—blue, green, fire-filled and watery by turns—was all around, emanating from the fire, or possibly from the rock walls of the cave, it was impossible to discern. It might even have been coming from the pot, or from the singer herself. It flickered and bounced through the cave, off the surfaces and through the water in a kind of dance.

The cave was warm, and strangely comfortable, and, very tired from her long walk through the woods and her swim, the woman fell asleep before she could help herself. When she woke, she was marvelously refreshed and found herself wearing a new simple garment. The singer, still at the pot, smiled to see her awake. “You must learn my songs,” she told the woman. “And you must take a turn, stirring my pot.” And so, the woman took over at the fireside and the singer taught her, line by line, the songs to sing.

Without sunlight, it was impossible for the woman to tell how much time had passed. It might have been hours, or days, a year or a hundred years. But after she had learned the singer’s songs, she knew she must be going. She was oddly reluctant to leave, and the singer seemed to know this. “You may stay with me, if you like, sister” she offered. “There is plenty of room here for two and you are a good help to me.” The woman was very tempted. It was so peaceful there, and so simple. The light that reflected through the cave was so joyful and so refreshing. She took a long breath, considering. Then she thought of her family, waiting for her in the house up above. She remembered the path she was trying to find. Regretfully, she shook her head. “Thank you, no. There is a part of me that would love to stay, but I know I must go back to the surface. And if I must go—”

“You had better be doing it,” the Singer finished for her, smiling.

The Singer acknowledged her decision with a nod, then said, “At least I can give you a gift, before you go.” And leaning close, she whispered a word to the woman and handed her a large pearl. The woman put the pearl in her pocket and kicked off up through the water once again. When she surfaced, she found she was closer than she thought to the opposite shore. Swimming hard and fast now, she gave a final push and, exhausted by the effort, crawled up onto the rocks.

After catching her breath and drying out a bit, she looked around. It was early morning. The sun was just clearing the tree tops and mist was rising off the lake. She stood up, facing the rocks she must climb over to make her way. Looking down, she was astonished to see she cast no shadow. “What is this,” she cried. “Have I died? Am I transformed to something fearful?” She fell down frightened and wept, not knowing what to do or what she was.

A small bird fluttered around her head. “Do not weep,” chirped the bird. “I have seen your shadow. It runs ahead of you, hiding in those tall rocks.” “Then I must catch it,” said the woman, and up she jumped, clambering over the rocks. To the bird, she said, “Fly ahead, and tell my shadow to wait for me.” The bird flew off as the woman climbed and scrambled.

Soon it flew back, fluttering just above her again. “Your shadow runs ahead of you. It says it fears you too much to wait for you.” “Little friend, beg it to wait. Tell it there is nothing to fear from me.” The woman said, breathless as she climbed.

The next time the bird came back, it perched on a branch while the woman caught her breath. Very quietly, the bird chirped in her ear, “Your shadow waits just behind this rock right here.” And indeed, the woman could see it peeking out around at her. Slowly, so as not to fright the slip of a thing further, so slowly she rose to face it, and said, “You have nothing to fear from, me, Shadow. Come out, and tell me why you run.”

Equally slowly, the dark shape emerged from its hiding place, pouring out larger than she had thought it. “I run from you because I am afraid of you. I remember you too well and how you kept me caged.”

The woman laughed. “But I am not myself as you remember me. You need not fear. The Singer gave me a new name.” And she spoke the whispered word, her own new name, out clear.

The Shadow relaxed. “That is the name I was waiting to hear,” and lifting on the breeze, the dark shape flew straight into the woman’s open mouth and wiggled down through her fingers.

The woman danced a small step, happy to have her shadow back. “Small bird, I would thank you,” said the woman, “but I do not know how.”

The little bird rose from the branch to her shoulder. “If you would thank me, there is a task I need done. My nest is over a stream, but the stream has dried up,” said the bird. “If you would help clear the stream and start it flowing again, I would be grateful.”

“I owe you much. Show me the way,” said the woman.

When they arrived at the stream bed she saw it indeed was dry, choked at the source with dead wood and murky bracken. “What shall I do now,” she wept. “For this job is too big for me alone. I have no blade to clear the wood and weed, to help you, friend.”

The bird whistled a quiet song and said, “Along this path there is a Smith. Follow your way to his forge, and give him that pearl you carry and he may help you.”

The woman was loathe to lose the pearl, but she had promised to help, she knew. So, drying her eyes, she made her way through the woods. Soon, she heard the sound of a hammer hitting iron, the roar of the forge, and the hiss as hot metal met water. Approaching, she saw a low building, open to the road. In front was a clearing, and at the clearing’s center roared a large hot fire. Anvils large and small stood around. A Lady waited at the clearing’s edge with her horse, which was being shod by the smith. He was a broad man, his face ruddy from the heat, and his face, arms, hands all showed scars from his work. But his eyes were kind. The woman watched quietly as he fixed the last shoe onto the horse. Then he turned to her and said, “Hello, good woman. What brings you here this bright morning?”

The woman curtsied to the smith and Lady, both, and explained “I promised my friend the bird I would help clear the stream bed and start the water flowing again, but I have no blade to cut away the choking weeds and grass. I thought perhaps, if I paid you with this pearl, you might have some aid for me.”

The Lady nodded at her as she mounted her horse. “Friend Smith, we are done here. I thank you,” and then to the woman she said, “That stream bed is on my land as it happens. You will do me a kindness by clearing it too. You have my thanks.” So saying, she rode off into the trees.

The Smith chuckled to himself, then turned and glanced at the pearl the woman was holding. He took in his breath, then his eyes bored curious and deep into the woman’s. “This is no payment for me but the thing itself,” he said. “And I ask no payment for this work.” “If there is work to be done you had better be doing it,” she whispered, reluctantly giving her pearl to him. And taking it, he placed it on the largest anvil and with one blow he crushed it.

The woman cried out in fear at the sound, closing her eyes. When she opened them, she was astonished to see the smith held out to her a sword of steel with pearl shine and inlay. “You carried this the whole time, and never knew it,” he told her. “It’s a rare gift, and a rare one who carries such a thing. Now go you back to your bird. And know, you are welcome here any time.” And saying that, he turned his back and went to the bellows to urge the fire hotter.

The woman, marveling, went back to the stream bed. And indeed, from then the work was easy. Within a day she had wrestled the overgrowth and the dead wood away from the spring’s source, and freed the water to flow again. The little bird trilled happily to see it. “You have repaid my favor amply, thank you kind woman. Your way lies past the spring’s source, up the hill. Come back to see me any time.” And happily chirruping to herself, the little bird began constructing a new nest out of bits of saved string and twigs and other little sundry items.

The woman went on her way, tying her sword around her waist, happy to have it. And indeed, it was just as the bird said, her path did lie up on the hill over the spring, as clear as ever. With great relief, she began walking in a direction she knew would take her home. The afternoon was warm and clear, butterflies and bees hummed and fluttered in the grass and flowers, and she enjoyed herself in the fresh breeze, knowing she was headed home at last.

To her surprise, as night came on, she saw that the path led into a dark opening in a hillside. “What is this,” she thought. But clearly, there was nothing for it but to enter, for the path was broad and well-cleared. “Well, if I must enter the hill, I’d better be doing it,” she said to herself. Just to be safe, the woman pulled out her sword, and, a little fearfully, entered into the hill.

She was surprised to find herself in a long passageway that seemed to go through the hill entirely. Torches lined either side, so the whole thing was lit up with the warmth of the flames, and shadows danced. Lining either side of the hall were all manner of thing—chests of treasure, dusty with time, dim pictures and forgotten oddments so old and strange it was impossible to know their value. And all along the walls were all manner of masks. In the light of the torches, the features of the masks moved, growing larger and smaller, brighter and darker. “What place is this,” the woman breathed to herself. Curiosity and awe filled her.

This is the hall of the ancestors, said a chorus of voices in her head. There was no sound to be heard with the ears except the quiet padding of her footsteps, the occasional clink as her sword knocked against something accidentally. You will find this hall open to you, should you want to return. Until then, you may take one torch to light your way, for when you emerge it will be night once more.

“Well, this will certainly be an easier passage than those thorny woods I started out in,” thought the woman to herself. “And… I might come back to see my friend the bird again.” So she curtsied to the spirits of the place and said, “I thank you, good folk. One torch will I take. And when I come back I will bring you a gift as well.” And, putting her sword back in her belt, she lifted the torch closest to her and made her way forward.

Soon enough, she emerged out into the world once more and found herself in her own back yard and garden. Her family welcomed her into the house with open arms, curious and delighted to hear her story. “But mother, we are confused,” said her daughter, after she finished. “You say you have a sword, and a torch, but where are they?” And sure enough, astonished, the woman saw that the hand that had carried the torch held it no longer, and instead there gleamed a ring on her finger, fiery in the night. And as for her sword, it had melted into a pearl handled pen in her pocket. Laughing, she pulled it out to show her children, and promptly wrote down this story.

And now, a good night to you all. My story is done.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Embodiment and Woundedness: Owning Up to Being an Animal

July 18, 2014 / sarahsadie

It’s my birthday month, and I’m sorry to say I got a crown.

Not a sparkly one from some kid-friendly chain restaurant. Not a crown of branches or horns from a Neo-Pagan ceremony. No, I won one of those plastic, temporary tops for a cracked tooth that will soon enough be replaced by porcelain.

Happy Birthday. Feeling older, much?

I should have taken a page out of your book, Wayland, lord, and asked
if the dentist would carve me a tooth out of bone.

***

So I’m feeling a little vulnerable, tonight. Aware of my body, more than I usually am, and its tender places, its wounds and scars. This is probably doubly true because I just started a shapeshifting class at Cherry Hill Seminary. Here are the very first sentences of the very first reading assignment:

Owning up to being an animal, a creature of earth. Tuning our animal senses to the sensible terrain: blending our skin with the rain-rippled surface of rivers, mingling our ears with the thunder and the thrumming of frogs, and our eyes with the molten sky. Feeling the polyrhythmic pulse of this place—this huge windswept body of water and stone. This vexed being in whose flesh we’re entangled.

From Becoming Animal, David Abram

What does that mean? What is “shapeshifting” anyway? my friends ask me. For me, the concept of shapeshifting offers (I hope) a way to enter the experience(s) of world more deeply, more fluidly. I’ve been looking forward to the start of class for weeks. But after the first Google+ chat session, I feel more trepidation than anything. The teacher emphasized what a personal journey this is going to be for us.

It’s clear that in order to learn how to move even an inch or a minute away from the usual mundane experience, I’ll have to become a little (or a lot) vulnerable. The adult layers of defense and protection I worked so hard to create? Peeled away.

Shields down, friends. It’s about to get real.

***

For years, no matter what term/s I called myself—poet, theologian, at-home-parent-trying-to-survive, polytheist, or (as I used to say in a whisper) just a vague-ish pagan-ish sort—my practice has been pretty much the same: a shifting triangulation between historical source/text, poetry, and myth. With this class, it looks like NATURE may be about to assert itself as the fourth leg of that practice. That includes (especially) my own human animal nature, bag of skin and muscle and bone, hair and bacteria. I welcome that. And I fear it too, a little. Abram knows this:

Corporeal life is indeed difficult. To identify with the sheer physicality of one’s flesh may well seem lunatic. The body is an imperfect and breakable entity vulnerable to a thousand and one insults…Small wonder then that we prefer to abstract ourselves whenever we can, imagining ourselves into theoretical spaces less fraught with insecurity, conjuring dimensions more amenable to calculation and control…

It’s completely appropriate and serendipitous that we’re also just back from our annual camping trip up on Madeline Island, in Lake Superior. I have some coastal friends who scoff at the idea of the Great Lakes—it’s not the ocean, they say with a shrug of a shoulder. Of course not. The ocean is endless, absolute.

The Great Lakes are something else again—interior seas. And so they fit differently into the psyche. There have been a couple of blog posts I’ve seen, here and here, in which the authors map out their spiritual geographies. I find the idea fascinating—and I tried it one night with my crayons and sketchpad. It’s not finished yet, but already off to one side, there’s a lake. A large one. When I stepped into the waters of Lake Superior, I recognized the sensation exactly. I’ve swum here before.

Remember when we pitched our tents,
young as we were, above Superior’s gray shore,
and discovered there a steep path to the back
we hadn’t seen before?

On my own map, it’s labeled the Lake of Sorrows, and there have been times when I have had to swim it, ready or no. Maybe someday I’ll write about that. About the temptation to stay there, in the water. Under the water. It was one chapter of a longer journey. Maybe someday I’ll write the rest.

It was a journey of healing, after a wounding of my own that was a little more serious than a cracked molar. And it’s important to tell our stories, to ourselves and others. But today I wonder—when I move in this essay from Lake Superior itself to my Lake of Sorrows, am I merely imagining myself into one of Abram’s “theoretical spaces less fraught with insecurity”? I’m willing to consider the possibility, although admittedly nothing about swimming that interior Lake feels “more amenable to calculation and control.” Not at all.

Here there be dragons.

You aren’t kidding.

***

Shapeshifting is partly about knowing yourself intimately, and all your wounds and weaknesses. In the Northern pantheon that I am learning about, woundedness is a common theme. These gods are for the most part not young and beautiful—they have their scars. I’m far from an expert in the lore but off the top of my head: Tyr gives up a hand to bind Fenrir, the wolf that represents Chaos. Sif’s beautiful hair is hacked off (and we all know what that represents, right?). Both Frigga and Sigyn lose their children. Sigyn is burned, scarred by the poison she protects her husband Loki from. Odin the Allfather sacrifices an eye for wisdom, hangs himself for nine days in order to win the runes. And Wayland the Smith is hobbled, and held captive for years.

He looks at the pictures of Lake Superior on my computer screen.
We call it the Quench.

Lake Superior?

Shaking his head. Water. We use water to quench
the hot blade. That is the moment of testing, to see
if what we made will be true, or if it will torque, twist, corrupt.

***

Any blessing carries its shadow, sometimes for years,
folded like the wings of a bat at noon.
How grateful I am, friends, for that shared memory,
now that I have reached another interior shore,
this time alone, and again to strip down…

We all have our scars and wounds, not all of them visible. Not even remembered, some of them, maybe, until that sudden plunge into a new element. Wish me luck.

Don’t trust to luck.

Notes and References

The whole poem, “Youth Was Armor Enough” can be found here.

Abram, D. (2010). Becoming Animal. New York, NY: Random House (Vintage)

“The New Face I Turn Up to You”

June 11, 2014 / sarahsadie

The windchime outside my window sings to the breeze. Lawnmowers drone. It’s a mazy, lazy day, this last day before the adventure of summer begins for my family. I should be productive, but I’m distracted by a poem I’ve had in my head for a few days now, Alice Walker’s “New Face.” I’m not the hugest Walker fan out there—love The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens but not every book, right? But this poem. This poem. It’s wise.

It’s wise to know we have twin and triple selves. We can, and we do. It’s wise to know we need the freedom to explore those multiple selves—to face them. That somehow, we can’t love fully and grow into ourselves if life locks us into a repeating pattern.

But there’s the rub. Because life sure does try its hardest to lock us in, shut us down, keep us traveling well-worn ruts. Maybe not “life”…when I look out at summer coming in, when I watch my kids grow into themselves, I see how in this universe creativity wells up and spills over. No, it’s something about the systems and societies we find ourselves in. A system wants to perpetuate itself, and it will use us (and use us up) to maintain.

Are you in healthy systems? Is it working for you? Is it working for your neighbor?

When I look at headlines, at news, at what is going on, I feel trapped, and fearful. Don’t you?

People talk about “imagination” and “creativity” as though these are qualities of childhood, somehow lost as we grow older. When I admit to people I am a writer (a poet, even!) I’ll hear a sigh in response, “It’s so wonderful that you are creative.” This is the same response that children get, on coloring a sky pink or green or a horse polka dotted, “What a great imagination you must have.” But imagination, creativity, are qualities we all have and can tap into, if we have the courage to do so. I find it’s mostly courage we lack, though we find excuses to explain it away in other terms.

I wonder if we have an ethical responsibility to develop creativity and imagination within ourselves, to encourage it in others. To be willing to see new faces in those we love. I’m talking about radical engagement. With each other. With life. Are. You. Happy.

I’m thinking again about that last post I wrote on ergodic literature. Paths not taken…voices not heard… Eventually, I hope these pieces I write will link into and between each other, forming a textual labyrinth, a maze of more than three dimensions. Any maze becomes a mirror, the better to see ourselves. And that makes me think of something I wanted to ask Wayland.

You were imprisoned and flew away on wings
of your own devising, like Daedalus.

There are similarities, yes.

Then what can you tell me of mazes?

I can tell you how the smith folds and hammers steel
over itself, again and again. The layers give strength.

Every once in a while it would be nice
to get a straight answer.

Straight lines are hard for us.

Layering. Curving back around. Digressions, diversions, paths, choices. Creating a maze. Creating amaze. This is how to stay sharp. To live awake to the world, you have to find your own happiness, choose your own way, accept your own power and responsibility. And when I write “you” I mean me, too. This is inviting the wound. We may have to find new faces for ourselves. That can be…awkward.

Once in my life I was too afraid to dare happiness. Maybe it is equally true to write, once upon a time I did not know myself. One time, I turned away from the proffered mirror. And for a while, all my gods deserted me. I swore then I would never again fear where life might take me.

If that sounds like a dare, it is. The same dare the Fool makes every time she steps off the cliff and trusts the path will meet her foot.

How better to enter summer?

A Theology of Trees and Fractals

June 4, 2014 / sarahsadie

June, and my yard is full of leaves again. I’ve been thinking about trees, about forests, dense and wild and other. It’s funny but I can’t think about forests without thinking about the branching paths we take through them, or maybe, the paths that lead us deep into the heartwood. Any forest is a labyrinth, a fractal pattern, complex at every level. Choose a path.

***

I’m reading a book from 1997 on ergodic literature, Cybertext by Espen J. Aarseth. “Ergodic” looks like the gods might be hiding in the text, but Aarseth states the word“derives from the Greek words ergon and hodos, meaning “work” and “path.” Unlike a traditional novel or movie, in ergodic literature, narrative is interrupted and the reader must make active choices when the paths fork. The easiest example might be Choose Your Own Adventure books, which I devoured as a kid. Interactive games are obvious examples. The Tarot deck is another. Ergodic literature is wildly fun, juicy, and completely intense all at once:

“you are constantly reminded of inaccessible strategies and paths not taken, voices not heard. Each decision will make some parts of the text more, and others less, accessible, and you may never know the exact results of your choices; that is, exactly what you missed.”

Every day we wake up is Choose Your Own Adventure, wildwood, labyrinth, if we have the eyes to see. I live on the border of grassland and woodland, in Southern Wisconsin. Or: I live in deep forest, the same deep forest we all wander through, that most of us have forgotten. Choose your reality; both are true.

***

Trees catch the wind and give it voice. Words catch at thought. These words like twiggy fingers snag on ghosts and gods. I read over my journals and weave dream and shadow together, stitch that cloth to noon o’clock until everything is weightless, suspended in blue.

The house swings up through ash trees,
to hang in light-scalloped air and interstice,
a lacework net of leaf and gap exactly
like a well-told joke that dangles us
over the pit of the true strange…

***

Sometimes I think of myself as a guide of sorts—

A guide? You? Wayland laughs.
No, I think not—a translator, maybe.

***

Choose a path. We have three large and lyrical ash trees in our yard. Someday not too far off they will all three die from the emerald ash borers now found in Dane county. In one of them, we’ve started hanging bird houses, round little doors peeking out among the green, darts of color and touches of whimsy. I know a woman who tucks her poems into an old birdhouse in her garage. Sandwiched between generations and caring for multiple relatives, she has no time to revise or send work out into the world, and she has no space in her house to call her own. I look at my birdhouse tree, the multiple doorways. Maybe I will start to poke my poems into those apertures, just as I poke them into these essays. Maybe I will shred them and let the birds weave them into their nests, along with my hair and the straw I never spin into gold. Offerings.

***

…Just like a joke,
the crack of alarm gives way to laughter’s gasp.
No one told us this was the day
our possessions would go weightless,
our footsteps sound across suddenly taller floors.

***

Paper comes from trees. All the leafy, dream-soaked notebooks I have written my way through—are my words worth the death of the trees it took to house them? They’d better be.

Literature is a combinatorial game that pursues the possibilities implicit in its own material, independent of the personality of the poet, but it is a game that at a certain point is invested with an unexpected meaning, a meaning that is not patent on the linguistic plane on which we were working but has slipped in from another level…

–Italo Calvino

(The gods are not even hiding.)

***

Is mine a theology of the Wildwood? Or is it a theology of poems? Of fractals?

Same thing. He’s reading over my shoulder.
Sometimes the Adventure chooses you.

***

“Work” and “path” may be how we locate our gods. Love is work. Poems are work. Living well is work. Asking the big questions and staying ready for the answers is work. Work worth doing. Halfway through the writing of this, I look up from my screen and realize how much of the art in my house features trees. Abstract, realistic, partial or completely representational, trees have been with me a long time, I guess.

In my parents’ house, the walls are covered with birds.

Entering the Hall of the Heathens

May 22, 2014 / sarahsadie

They eye me warily. It’s a crowded room, filled with the presence of the living in t-shirts or traditional costume, and the shades of the ancestral dead in their own garb, all ranged together along tables and benches. A TV broadcasts the game up in the corner, silent and flickering. I close the door, moving to the fireplace at the far end. I don’t know anyone.

You’re not Asatru. Not Heathen. Not one of us.

No. Maybe not. But I would stay awhile, as guest, if I may.
You value hospitality, I think? It’s cold out there tonight.

A murmur of distrust, but it’s true. Their code of hospitality gives me opportunity to pause here with them a while, to bear witness to their lore and stories, and share my own, and maybe also share a drink or two, if I’m lucky.

***

What is it to be approached by the voice and figure of a god of a religion not your own? Revelation? Delusion? Conversion…or merely conversation?

***

Whatever you call it, however you understand it, this was not looked for. I was haunted for months by a vision of fire. And in the firelight, eyes. Who was this? No one I knew. Theology lives at the pulse point. At the library I began reading through the mythology stacks, systematically, searching.

Hephaestus? …no. Nothing. No buzz of recognition.

Ptah? (also a maker god, also associated with fire).…no. Still blank. Radio silence except for the sound of the crackling flames, and a low chuckle.

My breakthrough came thanks to Facebook. A friend on my feed linked to an article about Paul MacDonald, a swordsmith in Edinburgh looking to take on two apprentices. An internationally known smith, McDonald’s crafted swords for traditional martial artists, but also replica swords from the movies The Highlander, The Princess Bride and, possibly best of all, the He-Man movie and I was halfway through ordering plane tickets to Edinburgh before I remembered myself. I’m married, with two kids. I have no skills with power tools, no mechanical skills at all, really, and probably not enough upper body strength to lift some of the swords he makes, let alone craft them. Why then did this opportunity feel like an answer?

Moving to Scotland to apprentice myself to a swordsmith made sense on the deepest levels, not on the surface of my life. I looked at the picture on the screen again. I thought of the forge, the fire, the laughing eyes, the location.

Wayland Smith? I asked tentatively, not even remembering why or how I knew the name.

Electricity lifted me an inch off my chair. Wayland indeed.

***

My sisters laugh, terrified
at how I change, crack
open, change and crack again.
A faulty pot, misfired.
No, no, I say. This
is what human looks like, this
closed-off Northern face,
lost and falling, sky-colored
sidewalks, the angular
scrawk of a lone goose, yawn
of traffic over the drawbridge.

***

I am not Asatru. If I’m Heathen, I’m an “Eclectic Heathen” at best –which means to many, I’m not Heathen at all. My allegiance is to my pen. My faith is in the hand that holds the pen and the spaces that it opens, the shapes it makes. The inky blue line on the page, ribboning left to right, is my winding path, how I hear the questions and how I seek the answers. I am in this place, this space, among these gregarious and generous people because there is a story to be told and it has found me. It starts with a smith god, but where it will end I don’t yet know.

***

Following Wayland’s lead, I spend a half day attempting the art of blacksmithing at Shake Rag Alley. I make a hook. One hook. I work for over an hour and still my project is incomplete when we bank the forge fire for lunch. Our teacher admits an experienced smith would turn a hook like that out in five minutes.

When I drive back to Madison, Wayland shows up in the passenger seat.

So what did you learn?

I learned I should stick to writing.

Perhaps true. But what did you learn about hammers?

I glance over. I would have thought Thor would teach me that lesson.

A smile. That’s a different matter. Thor’s hammer is his own, and serves him well.
What did you learn of a smith’s hammer?

Let me think about that.

***

It’s a pretty steep learning curve, to start blogging in the same season you start exploring a whole new family of religions. I don’t know why exactly, but these are the myths and figures I have to tangle with and I’m still figuring out how to make sure my bio appears at the bottom of this post and get the spacing right and then I go try to learn my Rune for the Day and finally I hop over to Facebook and scan through the polytheist groups I’ve joined and figure out the shorthand slang and the interpersonal politics and I’m not even sure I’ll like mead.

***

Another riff on the definition of poem:
interruption, not illustration. Poem as hammer
to crack the narrative wide, allow blue
springing wet to the page. Kafka said it best:
the ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

***

I search out Wayland the next morning.
A hammer in the hands of a smith brings transformation.
Transformation comes through fire.
Trust to the materials of this good green earth.

These are three lessons I learned.

Hold to those and you’ll be safe enough. My people trust the hammer’s voice.
You travel under my protection, he tells me. I’m not the biggest God in these parts,
he smiles at his own joke, but I am –respected. You will go safely.

***

The fire pops and crackles. The TV flickers silently up in the corner. Someone nods to the server to bring me a glass, but no one fills it yet.

Writer, do well by us.

I look around at their faces. Part of me, a young part, wants to say, I will, oh I will! I want them to like me. But—what promises can I make that I can be sure of? Honesty and honor count with these folks. I look back at them, each in turn.

I’ll do as I’m done by. How’s that for a fair deal.

A Dance of Impermanence: Introducing Myself in Two Chapters (Otherwise Titled, Why Am I Here and Who Am I, Anyway?)

May 14, 2014 / sarahsadie

“Theology, at the core, is an expression of our holiest experiences and our deepest knowing, integrated with the clarity and eloquence of the rational mind.”

Christine Hoff Kraemer, “Opening a Pagan Theological Dialogue,”
Sermons from the Mound blog, Dec. 7, ‘12

Chapter One

I have described myself as “pagan” for years without really knowing what I meant. Or what the word meant. It occurred to me recently I should maybe learn a little more. So, this past semester I went back to school and took an introductory class on Pagan Theologies at Cherry Hill Seminary, taught by Christine Hoff Kraemer. I went into the class defining myself as a loose-ish, pagan-ish follower-ish of an undefined goddess figure, and I more or less believed that all the gods and goddesses are really archetypes—representing facets of the human experience, common to us all whether or not we are aware of them.

I changed my mind pretty quick when I was approached by Wayland the Smith, a more-than-mortal figure about whom I knew nothing.

*****

The dark river unloosed.
The bright-eyed bird sought rest
in pine trees full of a broken clock
music of grackles, ditches full
of the chonk-a-ree of redwings.
It’s a birdy world, a pratfall
of lost, pit of resist, as rinky-tink
meets honky-tonk, minister
meets medicine show meets last
night in the eyes and tempest
tossed. Comical and sad,
that glottal halt, salt water
taffy and the smell of lilac.
Listen. You can’t go back.
Fallen and falling like a waterfall,
the music that cracks
the sturdy little egg of the world.

(“Autobiographies”)

Raven Kaldera, shaman, priest and author, says, “You get the god you call.” Maybe, but I think I placed the call in my sleep. So now I’m learning as much as I can about polytheism and the Norse, or Northern, as I prefer, traditions that Wayland is part of, reading books and searching websites and trying to memorize the runes. Occasionally Wayland himself chimes in, telling me what he wants or giving me advice. He can be quite specific. Recently, he asked me to keep my eye out for a ceramic grail or goblet, bone-colored.

No, you know that’s not it. I want a goblet made of bone.

But where on earth will I find something like that? We’re at Sears. I see a white coffee mug and pick it up.

It’s $3.49, on sale, mass produced. This is Sears. Put it down.

I look sideways at him. You’re not going to be a cheap date, are you.

You have no idea.

*****

I could be more worried about undertaking a theological life journey with a largely forgotten deity who wants to wake up again, but I’m a poet. I figure it comes with the territory.

Who am I? Why am I here? Big questions—but inserting myself into an established blog space seems to demand some account of myself. My life, like this essay, is a patchwork of prose, poetry, daily life, spiritual musings, occasional interruptions and eruptions. Intro to Pagan Theologies brought me full circle to my life twenty years ago, an undergraduate majoring in Religion. I loved every minute of the Cherry Hill class. When it ended, I grieved a little and wrote in my journal, “I need community. I need adventure. I need a way to sink my teeth into life and not let go.”

And then Christine emailed, asking if I wanted to write for Patheos.

Chapter Two

Okay, that’s a wrap. I think you’re in, kid.

But—

No buts. You can do this. I could point to poems where you already have.
Write the shadows. Write the taboos. Write me.

But—I’ll sound like I’m crazy.

Oh come on. Where’s your courage? Where’s your sense of adventure?

Right. “Fear nothing.”

Fear nothing. Including ridicule. Remember, they laughed at me.

Yes. Yes, I –I know that story.

I know you do.

Your story. Wayland, lord, I—

Enough.

*****

There’s one very, very old, relatively well-known story about Wayland from the source materials that have survived. As a writer, I can’t wait to wrestle it down onto the page in my own language. But before I tell someone else’s story, I need to be honest about my own. Who am I, then?

Self in the world is a kind of performance, an interpretive dance of at times painfully mundane movements. When I walk out my front door and wave to the neighbors, there I am: wife, mother of two, school and church and community volunteer. I have a book of poems, Somewhere Piano, published by Mayapple Press, a couple of smaller chapbooks. You can look me up any day of the week.

But that would be too simple, wouldn’t it. Shortly after Somewhere Piano was published, it became clear to me that my domestic and domesticated self had said all she had to say. She no longer held the pencil. I needed to find wilder fingers.

So, like Albus Dumbledore drawing his silver memories down into a pensieve, I turned myself inside out and drew out a new self:

Shadow, Sad Eye, Said I, Sadie
Daisy
Dicey, Doosie, Do See, Do Say, Ducet

I turned myself into a pun, a smile. A way to breathe underwater, created of shadow and possibility. I set myself dancing on the page.

*****

Career suicide, conventional wisdom argued, aghast. Changing your name midstream.

I’m exploring unconventional wisdom. It’s my hope to touch in here every once in a while, to explore the connections between poetry, myth, Wayland’s story and my own wanderings and wonderings, and how it all relates to current events, life in this twenty-first century. Just like my favorite bread-and-butter pickle recipe, the Journey is “good alone or with somebody,” but I think it’s best when shared with others.

Unconventional wisdom keeps me in motion, dancing in the spaces between Sarah and Sadie, able to change, to disappear and then reappear, eyes a slightly different color than they were. Unconventional wisdom encourages me to imagine a person can be verb instead of noun. Truth lies somewhere between fictions. I would not posit this essay as truth.

*****

A book is a basket of deaths. Small ones.
A web with no spider (hide
her), this is the secret dilation,
the interior shore, a little
lagniappe, something more,
a dance for the sake of dancing.
Verse. Reverse. Press in, be pressed
upon and disappear. Address,
redress and put your clothes on, honey.
Embrace arrest. Treat and retreat. Flight
does not equal resist. This is
the walled garden, the invitation,
an intimate penetration.
Let’s not lie or cover over.
It’s sexy as hell, what’s going on.

(“Riff on the Definition of Poem”)

*****

This is the path I’m on, maybe not quite so rational in my approach as the epigraph by Christine would suggest—more of a perceived glimmer, a scent I follow down the road, trusting peripheral vision, sideways, sidewise.

The eyes in the greenery, wild, watching, just out of reach. Meet me there.

*All poems in these entries written by Sadie Ducet unless noted otherwise. “Riff on the Definition of Poem” is included, with a whole bunch of other lovely poems by many, many poets, in the 2015 Wisconsin Poets’ calendar, which is available for sale at the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets website.