Unbroken Silence

Remembrance

Wizard News

An unbroken minute of silence echoes remembrance and loss.
Still warriors are sent to fight while nations count the cost.

A painted banner cries ‘Never again!’A white poppy wreath flecked with red,
to remind us why we remember the servicemen lying dead.

The children dressed as soldiers lay bright red poppy wreaths,  Sons and daughters who never get older, a monument to grieve.

The comrades who never came home to our arms.
Soldiers, broken warriors, who no longer tend the farms.

The medals in their boxes and the names we won’t forget.
The distant graves, unvisited, of grandfathers we never met.

Do they still die for you and me?
Do they die to continue the violence?
Do they die so that we can remember?
An unbroken minute of silence.

Lisa Goodwin – Remembrance Day 2013

Veterans for Peace mark Remembrance Sunday at the London Cenotaph. 10-11-13 The organisation of ex…

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Absent Father – Childhood Dreams

Wildest dreams of Silverstone, I saw you win the race.

Fist clouted air, but I never saw your face.

You brought champagne and flowers to a seven year old dream,

I know you came; you knew how much it would mean.

First mate upon your dream ship. A Merchant Vessel spent;

Swallowed the essence from a telegram you sent.

A box of cards to open in a teenage romance,

Tracing letters where I know your hand once danced.

Flew with you to Africa and saw zebras on the plain,

Real, in colour, father, brought to life again.

With babe in arms, a mother. I looked and thought I saw,

A beaming grandpa peering through the door.

Now life without the hero who’s eulogy I see.

Very much missed by wife, kids, grandchildren. And me.

Two lives you lived. The one you knew; with wife and family,

And the one that I created and kept alive with me.

So, am I to mourn you? To kill the childhood dream.

Allow your death to tarnish my imagination’s gleam?

No. I’ll never say goodbye, since we never said hello.

Kinship passed us by like a wing of wicked crow.

I never will imagine you lying in a grave.

Nor deny your presence and the love you gave,

To bring this soul to being, to let me have my dream,

Of absent father hero on whom my whole world leaned.

Loving Well

A heart is held enthralled by stone and water,
It’s beating pulse is fed by constant flow,
In face of threat or danger, it won’t falter
And even when disaster bucks the bow.

Once, twice, thrice, by strife, a love is tested,
This love requires utter sacrifice,
Lay down my self, my life, at once invested,
Embraced and held by otherworldly sighs.

Defying definition, Oh my love,
To make of me the novice, and the brave.
Release all inhibition, not enough!
To walk into the darkness of the cave.

Living on the edge of a cold chasm,
Allowed to put the grapes upon the vine,
Driven by an archetypal passion,
Swallowed by the taste of love divine.

And hidden in the shadow cast by candles,
A heart trips on the strings of pure delight,
And bidden by the hallows of the deep well,
It brings a loving presence to the light.

Lisa Goodwin, Bard of Ynys Witrin April 2014

The White Spring re-opens 5th April

From 2014 when we got new gates at The White Spring.

Wizard News

When the White Spring was vandalised on 14th February, I was angry, hurt, and much like the building; felt exposed and vulnerable. As the custodian of this sacred space I felt the need to create a positive outcome. Not just for myself, but also for the vast spiritual community of all backgrounds and traditions who appreciate the sanctity of The White Spring. As a transformational coach I felt compelled to transmute this destruction into something exquisite. I must confess that a part of me wanted to just walk away, and I knew that was an option, but my passion for this place won’t let me.

In the face of crisis our capacity for transformation and spiritual growth is realised. This is one of those times. This is a powerful teaching that has grown out of my fire-walking training and is a core truth that I have experienced and witnessed on many occasions. One…

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Poisoned Apples – #Napowrimo 26

Lisa Goodwin Bard

Since the dawn of man,
the apple has been eaten,
divested from the garden,
ingested with poison,
turned into a tool of wickedness
and sweet hot apple pie.

Five black magical seeds
hidden in white flesh,
wrapped tightly in red skin
as if to hold the magic in.
From blossom to fullness
the apple inspired.

The first fruit taken by woman
twisted into a chewed core
of what she was before
the pomegranate transformed,
forever more to be
grossly misappropriated.

The gravity of the situation
should not be understated,
this rose tinted fall of man,
ripened full to fall again,
Seeding in Issac Newton,
a scientist of notable influence,
universal gravitation and a deeper
understanding of planetary motion.

But for one time in our history
when the apple was overrated.
Saint Steve had just one job,
to bring the apple to a mob
of hungry eyes, seeking evolution
to feed…

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Night-time Stalking

I am the hunter,
chasing Awen, stalking
the folds between dreaming.

Ever watchful, tender muse
tucks me into seams of
story to rock me awake.

Dark, tactile images,
driftwood, dismissed as cliché,
dancing to soundless beats.

Icons safe in solitude;
pursuing perfection with
no pen to pin them down.

No paper to unwrap them.
Words conceal shadows
free to taunt the mind.

I am the hunter,
chasing Awen, stalking
the folds between dreaming.

Everything we worked for is at risk by Maya Horton

Source: Everything we worked for is at risk by Maya Horton

Water

This month I am taking part in NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month. The aim is to write a poem every day for thirty days. I know lots of people haven’t signed up here to get political poems and experimental wordplay, so I am not posting them here, occasionally a poem comes up that is relevant to Wizard News. For those of you who are interested, my Napowrimo poems 2017 will be put here. Eventually, I want this page to be a showcase for poets and storytellers who are writing from, or about Avalon and Glastonbury UK – so if that is something you are into, please follow AvalonVox.

This poem was inspired by a prompt from day five, to write about a natural feature that you know well. I thought you might like it.

Water has memory.
I thought it would remember me.
But why should it?
My insignificant brevity
in dedication to its purity
is just a drop in its millennial flow.

People come and go,
filling their bottles,
quenching their thirst,
tying their clooties so well.
In my memory,
restoring,
sacred space,
a temple,
‘For the Love of It’
I remember it well.

Swift flows of remembrance
when ‘Welcome home,’
trembles through the bones
because well, here you are!
Home.

People come and go,
filling their bottles,
quenching their thirst,
tying their clooties so well.
sharing a story,
a prayer,
a ritual,
or worse,
loud angsty rants.
I remember it well.

Velvet strips of remembrance
a swift tease by candlelight
reflecting times passing
where stone trembles
with tribal shouts of grieving.

People come and go,
filling their bottles,
quenching their thirst,
tying their clooties so well.
riding through history
a chance
to heal
disease,
a miracle cure.
I remember it well.

1539, when the Last Abbot was done in,
and the Abbey dismembered,
here they cleaned the bloody tools,
that’s worth remembering.

1751, a gentleman’s magazine states,
‘ten thousand people drink for healing.’
The Mayor of Glastonbury reports,
Matt Chancellor endorses the healing waters.
And so increases its fame.

1872, George Wright writes
of pretty caverns clothed with moss,
fairy dropping wells on Well House Lane
before the Wellhouse was built to contain the water
and pump into town the cure for cholera.
And what was Glastonbury like then?
I remember it well.

Still, the flow keeps flowing
and people keep showing up
with their love for the gift
that pure water gives.
Feeling uplifted,
many lives lived, many lives taken.
promises made,
broken and unbroken,
rites of passage softly spoken,
misunderstood intentions,
machinations and inventions,
and mistaken prophecies,
does it remember all of these?

Does it rise up in remembrance of every story?
If you froze one drop for a moment
and magnified it a million times,
would it form into symmetrical shapes of love
or twist around in agony?
Surely it remembers both sides of the story.
It doesn’t remember me,
it just goes with the flow while
people come and go,
filling their bottles,
quenching their thirst and
tying their clooties so well.

NaPoWriMo 1 – Alfie you Fool!

It’s the first day of NaPoWriMo – National Poetry Writing month … now it has grown to include Global Poetry and we have GloPoWriMo.

Anyone can join in, from anywhere. The idea is to write 30 poems in 30 days. You can do what you please with your poems, share them, stuff em in a drawer, blog them and discuss, send to a friend.

This will be my third year participating, and there have been some outstanding gems among all the words. Some verses came out all shiny and ready to be performed, many more still sit there wanting to be tweaked.

I love the rawness of it, not spending days fermenting and editing, just sharing what inspiration comes each day- often I get a passable poem, sometimes I get poetry, and occasionally one will make it to the stage.

Today’s prompt from the website ( http://www.napowrimo.net/ if you want to join in) is to write a poem with short, tight lines, rhymes interwoven throughout, maybe an animal or two, and if you can manage to stuff it in, a sharp little philosophical conclusion.

This is a sad one because, this morning as I pondered the prompt and started to write, there was a crash outside the house. Our beautiful cat was hit by a car. He’s gone now.

Alfie was the most loving cat, his only loyalty was to the lap. We bought him as a ‘ratter’, his ‘Wanted’ poster on The Cat’s Protection website said definitely not a lap cat. How wrong they were. Alfie was a lap skank.

 

The best cat
we ever had,
Alfie,
eternal fool,
crossed
the road
on All Fools Day
before mid-day.
All that’s left
is a whisker
on the mat.
Black and white
hairs on
my jacket,
where
he napped.
The haunting
fact,
his absence
in the garden,
magpie’s relief.
A world turned
monochrome,
rolled over
stained red.
Across the
road
a sign said
‘A361 Lighten the Load’.
I wish it was
a joke.

Equinox Blessings – Into the Light

Look to the places where balance may be found. In yourself, in nature, in other people, and in your environment. There is harmony, duality, parity, proportion, symmetry, but are these not just projections and reflections of equilibrium?
This time of shifting tides can be unsettling. Balance itself is a transient thing. Everything is in flux – moving, growing, changing.

Does balance not bring stagnation? If we manage to maintain a perfect balance where would the impulse for movement come from? Like weighing scales with the same weight on each side, remaining still, the movement only occurs when we add or remove something from either side.

This transient, ever flowing dance of life is always in flux, ever-changing, and here is the paradox – the times of Equinox more often reflect where we are out of balance.

To dance on the ebbs and tides of life, moving to a place where harmony is felt may be more realistic. A sacred synergy of life flowing together, not seeking or grasping an illusory concept of balance, but simple surrender.

Perhaps instead of seeking balance, we seek to go with the flow of these shifting tides. To acknowledge that imbalance is its own perfect force. To understand that transformation requires movement.

So as the days progressively transform towards summer, here is a poem about the increasing light.

Into the Light

If you’ve been hid away and feeling lonely
and no one out there understands your plight;
the grieving time is passing very slowly.
Now comes the time of equal day and night.

If you’ve been lighting fires with damp tinder
and every step has turned into a fight.
If you’ve been hiding in the dark all winter,
it’s time for you to step into the light!

If you’ve lost faith and clarity is drowning,
You’re beaten by the struggle and the strife.
If your feelings have taken a good pounding,
while dancing on the ebbs and flows of life,

Know warmer summer days are coming in now,
there’s more chance to find your heart’s delight.
It’s time to gather with your kith and kin now,
so all of us can step into the light.

Let’s share the treasures of the winter’s reaping,
let’s bring the light to truth found in the dark.
Together; in our laughter or our weeping.
Let summer sun ignite our youthful spark.

Now, all of us have taken some refining,
while healing all the wounds of what is done,
oh I can’t wait to see your eyes a shining,
reflected in the warmth of summer sun.

Lisa Goodwin, Bard of Ynys Witrin – March 2014

Happy equinox to you lovelies – please do get in touch, I love it when I hear from folk who enjoy the poems and musings.

Brightest blessings