Altar

Last dusk
Grandmother shook the earth
and
spoke in her husky timbre

‘Go now child it’s time to drop your feathers,
go on and shed your torn and tattered skins.
Laid fresh on some one elses altar,
their use is not worn thin.’

She said to me
‘it’s time now, go’
‘Gift your best meant blessing,
hark your sternest cautions,
bury rusted hatchets,
hang out your bright white washing’

‘Child though!
Still listen to the ocean
and dig dead birds gentle graves.

Remember to sift the cinders from the ashen,
hatch a phoenix in your garden,
and reignite what can be saved’

‘In the springtime child you’ll
crown yourself in cleavers
and dandy up the lions
for now we set straw beds for winter dreamers
and tease free the strangled vines’

‘As light falls behind the mountain
leave the serfs and
sovereigns counting
and instead seek the purity of snow.

Catch the call upon the west wind
hear the silence in the hollow.’

‘Come to the cave that calls you
and listen to the void
Do not jinx the echo
but come to know
your own pure voice.’

‘Know your heart is first a tunnel
that births blood back to vein
Your heart is in the mountain,
the glacier that gave rain

so let your song come streaming
from the thawing of your pain.’

‘Now become yourself an altar
Wear the prayers you’re here to speak
Spin the syllables of a mantra
Scatter songs and stories
as ripe fruit and nuts from trees’

Lovers will come calling,
and always call too soon
those who seek the light
before the souls dark night

only fall on to the pyre 

just as

the moths

who seek

new moons.’