The Winding Way: Poetry. Stories.

and a triptych of voices

Many of you already know —last spring, I had the immense blessing of journeying for thirteen weeks into Story with thirteen women from around the world. We sang together. Cried together. Witnessed together. Wrote together. We dove under the covers with twelve stories —a collection of myths, fairytales and legends —Siberian, Ojibway, Seneca, Celtic, Welsh, Slavic, German, and English. Each of us discovered hidden and known aspects of ourselves inside of different fairytales. The creative process of writing illuminated secrets -from the tucked away dark and fertile pockets of our souls, to the Gaia mind of our wisdom-knowing.

We harvested our writings after completing our thirteenth session/celebration on lughnasadh, the perfect day for an online open mic performance, in which each woman spoke, sang, read, danced and/or performed up to 10 minutes of her creative process. It was glorious. They were a flame, a bloom.

And thus, Waking Red: An Anthology was born.

When I lose my way, when I lose my voice, Story comes to my aid. Story —Great great great medicine woman of Story. Fairytales. Myths. Legends. Story moves us out of time, into between places. Story reminds us to tend pieces and parts we may have forgotten about. Story rattles and moves our emotions. Story shapes our empathy. Story connects us. Story reaches her ancient hand from between the mists of here, not quite here, and pulls us in. We journey into Story and Story journeys us and returns us home, changed. Wonder-filled.

Image: Alexandra Eldridge

When things in the personal and collective feel chaotic, divisive, difficult, strange, painful, beautiful and/or bizarre (fill in the blank for these strange times), I turn to Story. The right one always shows up. Sometimes, she pulls me towards her, in a serendipitous enchantment. She throws her sticky ball of yarn at my palm, and pulls, pulls, pulls at me -in my dreams, in my waking, until my ship, my sails, are charting off the known course, and I find myself in the unknown again. Seen/unseen by Gods and Goddesses. Their Story finds me and transposes a new understanding upon my own. The yarn pulls, pulls, pulls me, directly into the mouth of once upon a time, not quite here, not quite there. Betwixt and between. The spirit world infuses my understanding of the story world I inhabit with meaning. It’s an ancient alchemy. For me, it’s a healthy escape mechanism -to leave the prison of my story. To enter into a whole new world. To return, changed. More free.

Stories breathe new life into old forms. Stories are more than a noun, they are a living movement, a verb, the water of life moistening what was dry. We need the water of life of story to change the way we see, breathe, be.

Image: Alexandra Eldridge

All this to say -I am nudging you to buy Waking Red. I want you to read their words.

And we need to read more poetry right now. Poetry is a spirit animal with the primal power to change us. To give us itself, naked, raw, growling, touching our nerves, our senses, painting color back into our cheeks, stimulating our animal body knowing and sparking Eros within us.

Image: Alexandra Eldridge

And we need to be fed more Stories right now. The ones that are not divisive. The ones that come from ago ago. The ones that catch us at exactly the right moment, saying, come, come, curl into my bear belly womb and season yourself into me. May my song be your resurrection. Because so much out there in the world we are told is made of sense doesn’t make sense. Fairytales and Myths don’t always make sense either, but they are more honest about it in their spiraling, winding way. Yet this Winding Way of Story is teacher, psychopomp, guide, and a map to meaning making. To getting us out of our own limited way of seeing. Even for the best seers among us. Story shows us what we hadn’t seen before. About ourselves. About life/death/life. About Change.

Image: Alexandra Eldridge

Perhaps one of the poems in the anthology will spark recognition, knowing, truth, meaning and reflection in you. Perhaps it will lead you to your pen and creative journal. Perhaps you’ll consider a romp with me into the Strange Spell of Story this summer. (more soon). Perhaps it will simply make you breathe more deeply. Or cry. Or smile knowingly. Yes. We need the words of women. Yes. We need the words of women who walk with Story. We need to build a new world out of our own imaginations. Because so so much of what is false has yet to fall, brick by brick from the tower that the hands of men built.

And so, I leave you with some poems from the anthology. Along the theme of the water of life. And wastelands. Wells. And grails. Well women, and healing waters. A theme we journeyed through in our thirteen week odyssey, but which is living more strongly in me in the recent weeks. Inspired by Sharon Blackie’s Well Women story in If Women Rose Rooted —though much older than her telling. Because once upon a time, women were the voice of the land. Once upon a time, the women tended the sacred balance between the world of kings, men and the land through the sacred waters of the well. It was an honor as a king, to drink from the sacred well tended by the well women. To pledge one’s loyalty and essentially to marry oneself with the land through the water of life. Until one king and then many chose greed and conquer and lust over listening. Over balance. Over truth. Over harmony. Conquest Over beauty. Rape over Protect.

But the women of the well are in me, are in you, are hiding, are waiting, are rising, are emerging, are singing. Some are weeping. There is and has been so so much wasteland. And, somewhere, there is a pure stream, a deep healing well. Poetry. Stories. Voices. Rippling like waterfalls. Moistening. Seeking life. Seeking truth.

image: Rizgin

Can you hear their voices? Lean in. Listen.

After Amangon

Waiting, waiting, waiting in the well

To rise, to return, to rejoice with my sisters

To hold the healing waters in my hands

Bring a flooding abundance of healing

To a broken savaged land

I wait I wait I wait

Deep deep here in the well

Where I hide from the fire of men

From their stinking smoke

And their stinking fire words

If they drank from my hands now

It would be bitter water

Salted by my tears, grief, anger, rage

They would taste death not life

Take into themselves the poisons they have spread

And choke on it

There are men of this age who should never drink

At the glittering eternal well

They poison it with their lips, their lies

They seek to transform all that is good

To all that is rot and ruin

I see them I see them I see them

And

Fuck

Them

Their pride, their egos

Their bigotry, their hate

Their messiah complexes

Their misogyny

Their darkness, their ignorance

Their violence

Their never-ending ever-lasting guns

Power hungry

War obsessed

And blind to it all

Does nothing ever change?

Will nothing ever change?

—by Sara Marshall, UK

Image: Rigzin

Lament

And the rain falls and the rain falls

And I wonder

What if I never find my skin at all?

When the clouds roll in

And the waves crash on my shore

And there are no singing songs

In the deep dead dark of night

Will I be left landlocked?

If I do not find it how can I be?

If I do not find it who can I be?

I am shape without form

Dissipating desiccating ghost

Nothing fits nothing fits nothing fits

I am a lock without a key

I am an answer without a question

When my scent is lost to me

How will I know myself?

Will I sing my selkie song in silence?

Wandering in this wasteland world

Unseen unheard

A faint forgotten story

Sisters call me in!

Sing me your calling songs

In these grey days

These grave days

Sing me home

—by Sara Marshall, UK

Image: unknown

THE WASTELAND

Wasteland is this vast space I do want to enter.

It knows my name calling me, nonetheless.

It is the one who peeks through the sidelines, putting up illusionary borders, offering a temporal safety net.

I see you Red Fox, Červený Líška, out of my peripheral vision.

I wasted time, hours, minutes, years

on people, relationships,

amongst terrains under a terrible unbreakable spell.

Years have gone by flipping page after page

filling blank journal after journal.

Here goes an additional one with a cracked spine,

earthen amber to dust. Another narrative,

a cherished fable, bájka,

my ancestral lines twisted like wires on an open cage.

Many generations later it will be told or not.

Things resolved, or not.

I wonder why I walk through these swamps without my trusted turquoise green rubber boots given to me by my beloved Teta Anna.

I can do this. Dokážem to.

No, I can’t. Nie, nemôžem.

I can do this. Dokážem to.

No, I can’t. Nie, nemôžem.

I can do this. Dokážem to.

No, I can’t. Nie, nemôžem.

Spinning in the northern most tributaries of low-lying streams

of brilliant marina blue against towering rust colored grass.

I am conquering the unknown. Blowing winds

with no rhyme and reason. Ballads over Lake Bemidji.

I turn my ear to listen more intently. Missing a verse or two.

Wasteland follows me no matter far North I go.

North. North. Severne. Severne.

My compass only reads in this direction.

How far north do I need to go?

Do I need to go to Churchill, Canada with the diminishing polar bears or further to the forsaken ice-scapes of ivory glaciers searching

for the long-toothed narwhals?

What would they tell me about the Wastelands?

Do I need to find the shamans and sleds

Can they save me if I cannot save myself?

Further, further I push myself to the precipice of the Arctic Circle.

Snow, ice, crevasses, till the white snow hare rabbits are invisible.

Cracking cracking crush crush the ice, ice cleats crisp crack.

Anchors thrown to my soul in this lonely somber beautiful landscape.

“Where am I going?” I ask the driver navigating

in his seal lined furs.

I am not even cold.

The Wasteland shatters me or else I shatter it.

I am choosing the latter.

It is so difficult.

Pulling away the attachments.

Snowflakes freeze upon my mouth

making it hard to utter a word.

But what source of comfort would words serve me in this moment?

I need blinding silence with only the echoes of elements.

I can do this. Dokážem to.

I can do this. Dokážem to.

—by Alena Hrabčáková, Northern Minnesota/Slovakia

image: unknown