The Altar of Little Beasties...

buzzsaw

the bee

cuts through

the knots

the grass

the fibers of sun.

she jams

the dust

the life

like gold

into back pockets.

she jigs

to hive

to home

just like

a tidy wee blade.

Now there are poetry lovers and then there are … well, then there is everyone else. People usually aren’t lukewarm about the subject. Anyone who says, “Yeah, I kinda like poems...” is probably buying you a drink, asking to add you to her online ‘friend’ collection or is about to hit you up for a loan just until Friday.

People who love poems can’t really explain their enthusiasm for poems with any greater clarity than poets can explain their own reasons for writing them. It’s a desire to write something as yet unwritten that speaks of something yet unspoken.

I am sure many folks over the centuries have come up with more satisfying definitions and words of wisdom. They certainly had to do something while waiting for the poem to get itself out of the pen, off of the typewriter keys or into the Word document. Poems can be such stubborn beasties.

I saw that bee in my mind. I heard her buzzing. I watched as she went from flower to flower. Buzz … buzz… buzz…

And then -- done for the day -- a sudden zip! She’s outta there and making a beeline for home. She goes from the bob… to the slice… just like that. And this is sometimes how poems act -- or how poets act -- depending on where you might wish to place the blame for all of those words bouncing about the head and keeping you up at night.

For instance, I wrote the first two sections of the poem above in 2002. I knew that the last line of the poem had to be something about a ‘tidy little blade’ in order to tie together what a bee does with what a saw does.

Poets try stuff like that…

I usually 'get’ the last lines of a poem or of an essay before I even know what the rest of the poem or essay is going to be about. That’s how it works with me. Why it happens that way or where it -- the idea, the theme, the hook -- comes from… no clue.

Then… I was stuck. The poem needed another stanza and I didn’t have one. Couldn’t see one, couldn’t hear one, couldn’t do whatever it is that we poets do one.

But that’s life then, isn’t it? Sometimes no matter how hard you try, whatever it is that you attempt to do, must do, are paid to do, or are suppose to do… doesn’t get done because you just can’t find the right way to do it.

You read books. You ask people things. You try this and that. Nothing. You look at it from this angle. Turn it around. Flip it this way and flap it that way. More nothingness. Welcome to the club. Hello, my name is Wren. Take a seat.

And then, one day, you take the thing out for the sixty-fifth time and…there it is. It comes right up to you wagging its tail.

I finished the poem today. Finished it enough anyway. Poets are always fiddling with their poems and a few lines might wander in or out or over to some other work in progress. It is a good thing for a poet to remember that words -- and ideas -- very often just come jigging on home… Good little beasties.

The Altar of Pennies...

If Pagans want to build a community spirit that will foster monetary contributions, the emphasis must always be on the benefit. The appeal to a ‘greater good’, the something beyond ourselves, should never be underestimated. Within the human spirit, there is a desire to be a member of a tribe that celebrates the good times (the bountiful harvest) and comes together to weather the bad times (the famine).

Our people are not homogenous. We come from different places. We celebrate different rites. We live in different family structures. We worship different gods. (If we indeed ‘worship’ any at all.) So none of these individual factors is what will unite us. None of these attributes will motivate us to give monetary support to anything that emphasizes particular things… unless these are also our particular things.

Pagans do support what has value. I support what I value and you support what you value.

What is the ‘value’ to me of my $200 donation to a Pagan community center if what I spiritually treasure is the new seedling of a nearly extinct tree sprouting up in a public park or a rehabilitated eagle being released back into the wild?

Although I have an altar both within my home and without, I meet with the Old Ones in the places and times of Their choosing. It is very, very personal. What is the benefit then to me if I place a ten-dollar bill into the hands of a religious usher and stand in a circle of strangers whose hearts and whose gods I do not know?

I am not you. I cannot be you. I do not want to be you. I am not special. I have no superior intellect or natural skills. I am not an elder. I am not a priestess. I am not a leader. Actually, for more than a decade now, I have been following you. And that is a key point…

I tend to be twitchy around people who want to establish something. I am especially edgy around people who want to establish something using my money and time and energy. I go almost postal if the planners are passive-aggressive in the approach:

“Don’t you want to have a place where we can all get together?” “If we don’t form a united front (or a voting block, a spiritual manifesto, a council of elders, etc) then we will never be taken seriously.”

My teeth hurt now… And so here is where the benefit thing and the differences thing and the individual thing and the money thing all get together to throw a party thing:

Take your mitts off of the thing. Stop trying to corral Pagans into something malleable and manageable.

Why do you think that people drift off after your Pagan 101 classes are done? Why do they stop supporting your shop? Why won’t they help put up the decorations or sweep your floor forever and ever?

We are Pagans, for the love of the Gods. We are pagans or want to be pagans or decided to become pagan because we fell in love. We are in love with the seasons. We are in love with the cycles. We are in love with the fire and the wind and the water and the earth. We love the Old Ones in whatever form They might approach us and within whatever form we might find Them. And most of the time, we even love each other.

We do.

And that right there is the benefit, the big payoff, the point that makes the sale. It has to be something built for the greater good. Nothing clears a room of donors, helpers, aides or potential facilitators faster than the aroma of simmering ‘me, mine and I’. It is a smell that cannot be perfumed over with a sweetly uttered we or a penciled in us. An agenda gives off a distinct stench. And most Pagans have very acute noses.

But Vision with a capital V is a good thing. So are Progress and Evolution and Cooperation and Honesty and Compassion. Throw some Valor and Strength and Endurance and Patience in there and maybe we have the start of something.

Oh yes, please do get excited. Dream big. Give people the tools and the encouragement and the skill set. Teach them what you know. Charge for it if you will. Give it away if that is in your heart.

Pagans like a good commodity as much as the next consumer. Pagans like things and ideas and training. They will pay for it if it has value and it benefits him or her. And they will then resell it, repurpose it, recycle it or just toss it away later if they want to. And if the thought of your precious commodity being chucked into a garbage heap is disturbing to you, please examine that inner pang more closely. Both you and the people to whom you peddle your wares and ideas will be the better for it.

A pagan is not a commodity. Don’t blame the Pagan if he or she doesn’t like what you are peddling. Don’t try to mold Pagans into what you or your shop or your class or your priestess or your groups think that they should be. Don’t do it.

Give them tools. Give them information. Motivate them. Become an example in your local community. Donate to causes that you believe in. Encourage a wide range of ideas. Speak of the we and the our as if you really mean it. And you better really mean it.

And there it is. Right there. The universal and ultimate benefit: love.

Build something for Pagans and do it for no other reason than because you love Pagans. Give to them your heart and your spirit and your time and yes, your money. Freely sacrifice what only your Gods will ever know that you sacrificed for them. Give to them something so powerful, so lovely, so simple and so free of your personal entanglement that they will surely know that you built it all in service to them and simply for the love of them. Build it. Expand it. Perfect it.

And then let it go. Let those wild crazy pagans do whatever they want to do with it. Let them reshape it, remodel it, recycle it or toss it in the trash heap later if they want to. And if you are feeling that achy inner pang thing again… It's a pretty good indication that perhaps you desire to have, to manage or to regulate the thing that you built more than you really want to love and serve the people for whom you built it.

Pagans will indeed support forms and organizations. But we won’t pay for admission. We already belong.

The Altar of Ordinary Days...

I don’t think that others understand how we hunger for little bits of unknown time. Friends of our lost loved one may believe that because something they recall is not a long story or the incident that they remember was not a ‘special occasion’ that it is not worth the telling. Oh, we do so disagree!

Many of us are lucky enough to have photos of birthdays and holidays, graduations and weddings. These we see, we know, we look at over and over again. But I think that while we grieve each time one of these dates comes around again, it is not these ‘special occasions’ that we wish for now.

Today, I want to chat on the phone with my daughter about nothing important. I want to go shopping with her for new shoes. I want to hear Skye laugh when she knocks over her drink. I’d like to hear her voice singing along with the radio. I want to feel the curve of her cheek, the warmth of her breath. I want a day with Skye that starts with buttered toast and coffee… and looking at gift catalogs …and sharing a hot fudge ice sundae after lunch. I want to kiss her softly on her face and say, ‘See you tomorrow’ … and not for one second doubt that I will.

I want one more ordinary day.

(I love you, Skye. 1971-2005)

photo by Rob Landry

The Altar of Night Spirits...

The Darkest Night

Has come around

The bay of Hounds

The only sound

As star-white steeds

Race through the wind

And branches rattle

And dry leaves spin.

Flashing silver

Pierces the moon

Swords held high

Against the gloom.

Wheels of fire

Roll on by

Shields are raised

Against the sky.

Gwynn ap Nudd

In white and red

Heads the Hunt

Of Ancient Dead.

Into the realm

Of darkened light

His mighty Band

In swift flight.

Night holds both

Beginning and end

The wheel has come

Full circle again.

Sigil and omen

Flare into sight

Spirits spin

a dangerous plight.

Dark Wild Hunters

Racing the year

Time stands still

Past and future appear

Embedded within

The dark and the light

Bound together again

On Samhain Night.

(copyright Wren Walker 2010)

What Green Altar Is This?

What Green Altar…

“Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?”

It is to this green altar then that I come. To this blog, this cyber-place, this tank o’ think and thunk. This is my urn. Hopefully, there will also be the occasional ode…

Probably no Greek though, ancient or otherwise.

(And here I am already taking liberties; my only defense being that if Keats is allowed his ‘drest’ then I can bring on my ‘thunk’ -- while, I readily admit, fingering a much more humble poetic license in my pocket).

Yet I can’t tinker everything into making sense. This is poetry and gardens and life. Sometimes it works and sometimes it goes oh so what-the-heck-was-that-all-about? And that is the point where the sacrifice requirement often steals the scene.

Things happen. Words twist into rhyme. Weeds find the cracks. Something comes and something goes and often it is the same thing caught both coming and going even if you don’t know it until later on.

Well, it will all make sense later on, we hope. And that is what poetry and gardens and life are for: to sort, to sow, to stare into space until rows and rows of things appear, scratched out by invisible hoes, ready for syllables or seeds…

You’ve been patient. I’m about to cut through the sod and plant something here.

I doubt any ode has been scrutinized, analyzed, criticized or whateverized more often than John Keats’, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. (1) It wasn’t those ‘silken flanks’ that garnered up some trouble -- and if I were an old lover of his I’d be more concerned about the ‘heifer’ reference -- with poetry critics (you evil, evil thugs) but the final lines:

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Trite and a bit preachy, those might be. Perhaps the best known critique was that of Josiah Conder, published in a September 1820 Eclectic Review: “That is, all that Mr Keats knows or cares to know. But till he knows much more than this, he will never write verses fit to live.”(2)

Bam! Makes one just want to run away from home and join the poetry circus. And thus began the whole ‘beauty as truth’ argument. Does a line in a poem have to be ‘true’ to be considered beautiful? Does it need to be understood as a statement of fact to have lyrical value? Does art, or does poetry have to be, or should they be, literal? Or is there something else beneath the words, hidden and lurking in rhyme or form or hesitation, which ‘is’ the poem and provokes the response?

Oh, I do love a good ambiguity.

And a snappy title…

References:

1. Bartleby.com; http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html

2. Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_a_Grecian_Urn