Wyvern Words for Wednesday

The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows
Have pulled the Immortal Rose;
And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,
The Polar Dragon slept,
His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:
When will he wake from sleep?

Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,
With your harmonious choir
Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,
That my old care may cease;
Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight
The nets of day and night.

Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be
Like the pale cup of the sea,
When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim
Above its cloudy rim;
But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow
Whither her footsteps go.

~ William Butler Yeats

Webs and Words for Wednesday

An homage to the spider energy in my path...literally. These webs, replete with large arachnids were in my back yard; I came across them while taking a break from the spider-themed custom witch hat I'm working on. Special thanks to Peter Ferioli for the fantastic photography. To Unlock the Soul pendant from my shop.

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

~Walt Whitman

Bee-Witching Words for a Wednesday

It fell to me to tell the bees,

though I had wanted another duty—

to be the scribbler at his death,

there chart the third day's quickening.

But fate said no, it falls to you

to tell the bees, the middle daughter.

So it was written at your birth.

I wanted to keep the fire, working

the constant arranging and shifting

of the coals blown flaring,

my cheeks flushed red,

my bed laid down before the fire,

myself anonymous among the strangers

there who'd come and go.

But destiny said no. It falls

to you to tell the bees, it said.

I wanted to be the one to wash his linens,

boiling the death-soiled sheets,

using the waters for my tea.

I might have been the one to seal

his solitude with mud and thatch and string,

the webs he parted every morning,

the hounds' hair combed from brushes,

the dust swept into piles with sparrows' feathers.

Who makes the laws that live

inside the brick and mortar of a name,

selects the seeds, garden or wild,

brings forth the foliage grown up around it

through drought or blight or blossom,

the honey darkening in the bitter years,

the combs like funeral lace or wedding veils

steeped in oak gall and rainwater,

sequined of rent wings.

And so arrayed I set out, this once

obedient, toward the hives' domed skeps

on evening's hill, five tombs alight.

I thought I heard the thrash and moaning

of confinement, beyond the century,

a calling across dreams,

as if asked to make haste just out of sleep.

I knelt and waited.

The voice that found me gave the news.

Up flew the bees toward his orchards.

By Deborah Digges