Last week I was on holiday with family in ancestral stomping grounds. Photos like this were taken. There is no Practical Storytelling & Sorcery post this week, because most of the day was spent writing the poem below. Because sometimes that is how it goes.

SOUND OF MILLIONS OF YEARS

The sea is the sound of  millions of years.
Tides breathe – in and out with roaring whisper
Salt-spume sets clocks to rust and rot

Sol\’s holy flame sets the skin of it afire
Like a lover\’s kiss
And Time is destroyed by Being.

This is the blood of it,
The pulse beneath the world
The flow of salt in vein,

Quickening most swiftly
With silver gleam,
And glory never far away.

It lies there – a golden path for heroes
Those bound to immortal tides
As they ride forth

Proud and merciless
Lit by blood\’s beacon,
Long dead and yet vital

Seen, yet ungrasped
Heard, yet unspoken
Felt, and yet known!

What a binding this is!

This burning noose
That makes brothers
And sisters of us all

We lift our faces to the sun
To feel its warmth,
And see ourselves therein.

Part of an ancient line
A cult of elder kin –
Another stands before you now

A foeman fierce and bright
So into death we dance
Surrendering to Night

And laughing both;
Arising, we watch the coming of the dawn
For this is the struggle for which we were born

Agape, we dance and sing
In silent ways
Through cold abyss and scorching sand,

We carve our runes
By breath,
And hand

At the end of all worlds
We stand fast
There at the beginning and there at the last.

Running and riding,
Reaching and preaching
So we harry them all, with fury\’s smiles

Restless and wicked
Sly and subtle,
Blithe and breath-taking – this our kind.

Truths from lies, of these we sing
At the commonest of hearths
And the halls of kings

A golden braid of woven thread
Linking the living,
And calling the dead.

Blood-kin all,
Though we may not be born
Ours are the voices that raise to mourn,

To praise, to shriek
With curses to speak
And blessings to bestow

Howlers and hollerers
Speakers and spellers
In worlds above, and those below

Down where all the dead folk go.

By iron-hard root
And writhing branch
By mirth, love and lust – with hands spread wide

Sober!
Ecstatic!
Thus we abide!

In the hollows of the earth,
And the curves of the sky
Listen close,

And hear our cry.