I.
A small person
in a small room in a small suburb

looks up at her God riding dark and holy,
immense and terrifying through Van Gogh’s starry night

demanding that she become a creature of paradox closer to Him.

His hounds howl, His owls screech, His ravens scream,
yet His silence is what opens the skies
and cracks the earth of
her small place.

II.
She walks with Him
where monks once walked –
‘Monks Walk,’ ‘Castle Walk’, ‘Tower View’,
where the monastery once stood near Castle Hill,

tracing the labyrinth of the roads and houses instead,

Church Avenue from which the Fairy Funeral
was banished to Fairy Lane where
stands the leaning yew.

III.
He takes her
to visit the Oldest Animals of Peneverdant –
the tawny owl who speaks of the silence before owl time,
the hidden newt, the shapeshifting otter, the tickled brown trout
reminding her of laughter the sacred in all,
the common darter living out
her last days.

IV.
At the spring
which dried up long ago
but runs again for this night

He takes out her eyes, rinses them
clean and grants to her the gift of clear sight.

He takes out her tongue, drenches it in mead, makes it a scroll
of ancient vellum written in giant’s letters in a typeset

known only to monks and nuns of Annwn.

She translates it into nine vows.

V.
The next morning,
at sunrise, at moonrise,

when the Hunter is gone from the night skies

the three stars of his belt continue to shine in her eyes.

She consecrates her room as a monastic cell
and speaks to Him her vows

as a nun of Annwn,
seals her awen.

*This poem depicts experiences in the lead up to and upon my taking my nine vows as a nun within the Monastery of Annwn on this morning’s new moon. The God referred to is my patron, Gwyn ap Nudd, a ruler of Annwn.