70 Years

To A Priestly Friend

There are no cloisters for pagans
Save the magic grove and secret stream,
For an altar, my heart in stillness
For sacrament, the violet that grows unseen
In woods blessed by silence
     and rushing of wind
     and gurgling of water
     and energy that mingles in separateness
With light that separates in shadows
I dwell in patterns of darkness
Rehearsing structures of light
With winged angels buzzing around me
To aid my soul in flight.

-Jehanah-

What a mystery, life

What a mystery, life
One day there is utmost contentment
While the next – a heavy heart
And nothing seems right.


Why is it that sometimes
We are like on a mountain top
Believing that we will never be the same?
We will not get lost
We will hold onto our vision
And grow such vast possibilities . . .


Why are we cast down
From the heights of heaven
Wherein we’ve come
To painful, confusing places?


Life, when you are ready to tell us
Or perhaps when we are ready
To hear your answer
There will no longer be just opposites
Just far apart realms
Of attraction and aversion;
And we will understand
That all is really One.


Perhaps by then we might glimpse
To understand
That all these scenes
Are part of a vast inner self
Looking like this and that, for awhile.


-Wendy Wolters-

A poem for Jehanah Wedgwood, Celtic Bard, Druid Priestess, Mistress of Ceremonies and enabling spirit for fifteen years of the Sacred Grounds Poetry Reading.  We each owe her more than we can ever express.  And damn it, we're poets.  Jehanah had a deep, deep soul, but she never made us delve deep to be touched by it; her spirit was always there, on the surface, an aura accessible to us all.  How many times have we seen and heard her both laugh and cry as she read her poems for us?  She could be gracious and she could be fierce.  Jehanah blessed us.  Jehanah, you will be deeply missed.

Mistress of the Labyrinth

Ariadne utterly pure
The virgin at the gate
What is she called after
She's breached by the hero
Who sought her grotto
Into the center of being
To meet with the desire
Dwelling in our gore spring

Pasiphae utterly luminous
Mother of the bull of Minos,
Mother of Asterion, the Star
To which does the center
Of the winding cell belong

Daedalus architect of wings
Unriddled the labyrinth
By tying a silken thread
To a myrmidon that walked
The circuit of a kohli shell

Persephone utterly clear
The Mother of Night
Guardian of the Tomb
Of the Dancing Ground
Vessel of mystery's mystery
goddess planted by god
Gives birth to the god
And only to the god

There is only one god for
There is only one goddess
Mistress of the Labyrinth
In the age of honey a gift
Keeper of the god stung bull
Raw meat for the Rite a gift
It is about the dance of death
And since this is so it must be
Ever about the dance of life

SP Mackin

Mother Of Winter

Winter Solstice time, Alban Arthuan,
And Ramadan and Christmas,
Hanukah and Kwanzi time...
There is one theme amidst us.

What druids call Dagda...
The great sun stands our best metaphor...
Works through his daughter Brighid,
Patroness of Light.

Where comes the art of firetending and
Metalworking in gold and silver,
The language of poetry, legend and Ogham,
The magic of music,
The mirroring of healing.

When the Dagda's daughters,
Nine Irish sacred women,
Even before the time of nuns,
Tended the perpetual Sacred Flame of Kildare...
Who but bright Brighid gave way to Hathor
With association with the white bull of memory
And the images emerge of sacred Egypt and Atlantis
As the pure white bull of Hathor

-Jehanah-

Jehanah

I miss you Jehanah
and I never told you thank you for welcoming me.
You were the heart of Sacred Grounds for me
and when the ground was pulled out
from under my stumbling feet -
you were there for me,
offering safe haven
at the reading you built,
not for yourself
as the shine of your silver hair
wove us into your moonlight,
but for us
the poets decimated by pinball economics,
shadowed by unwanted graves,
broken hearts on our sleeves,
and you gave us word birds
to chirp on our shoulder
until our poems flooded back,
our tears dried up,
and a river of words came,
reminding us
that there is hope, always hope.
When my bones disconnected,
words no longer joining them together,
you reminded me
that Dorothy's scarecrow
already had courage
as you pat me on the back with smiles,
sign me up, and tell me to sit if I need to
everybody was here to hear my poems.
Yesterday I read you were gone on Facebook,
put my head down, and cried
as my youngest son gave me a hug.
I feel adrift with no safe refuge,
unable to walk beside or thru my poems
that slip away with my confidence,
and as I stumble and fall again,
a million letters-words-poems
scattered around my crippled body,
I look up thru the tangle of my hair
to see you there,
reaching out to smooth my hair,
offering me a smile and an ear
with that twinkle of life in your eyes.
You brought us the peace of trees,
the redwood history of ancient stories,
your thrill at a new Hawaiian grandchild,
always touching each person who came into the room.
Now, here at your memorial
encircled by the wonder of your friends
who tell in a rain of poems
that you are here and always will be,
I know why this is Sacred Ground,
knowing that you have left each of us
a closet of visions
just waiting for us
in your mansion of trees

- Debra Grace Khattab - 11/17/10

Red Room

Jehanah Wedgwood - New Author Page on RedRoom.com