A poetry collection charting the story of a personal alchemy and learning how to love based around my sacred marriage to my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, as Sister Patience of the Heart of Annwn.
Published posthumously as a way of saying a final goodbye to Sister Patience at summer’s end HERE.
Swaying white fields,
dancing white mist,
a mouse on each wheat ear –
around them tails twist.
Oh Grey King
You’ve haunted this land,
memories lost,
now You’ve returned.
Your poor hungry people
had nothing to eat
but now they’re well feasted
on white ears of wheat.
Oh Grey King
You’ve haunted this land,
memories lost,
now You’ve returned.
And tonight we will feast
on apples and mead,
You and Your mouse wife
in these bare fields of wheat.
Oh Grey King
You’ve haunted this land,
memories lost,
now You’ve returned.
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I wrote this song for Gwyn ap Nudd to celebrate September which is known in Cornwall as Gwyngala ‘White Fields’ and in Wales as Mis Medi ‘the Reaping Month’. Here I equate Gwyn with Llwyd ap Cil Coed from the Third Branch of The Mabinogion, who sends His people as a plague of mice to eat the wheat fields with His wife as the ring-leader. Llwyd is likely to be the Welsh folkloric figure Brenin Llwyd ‘the Grey King’.
King of Annwn as You slumber
let me sing the world above for You –
of how the bees upon the lavender
are humming secret songs for You.
King of Annwn as You slumber
let me sing the world above for You –
of sunflowers tall as Gwythyr’s warriors
turning from the sun towards You.
King of Annwn as You slumber
let me sing the world above for You –
of how the apples on Your sacred trees
are ripening like the full moon for You.
King of Annwn as You slumber
let me sing the world above for You –
of how the blackberries are glistening
darker than the dark moon for You.
King of Annwn as You slumber
let me sing the world above for You –
of how the hazelnuts are growing
in threes and fives and nines for You.
King of Annwn as You slumber
let me sing the world above for You –
of how the white fields sway and tremble
as a wind like a scythe passes through.
King of Annwn as You slumber
let me sing the world above for You –
of how, like Creiddylad, I am waiting
beneath the shadows of the yew.
I was born from a rose bush
planted by Creiddylad – black, white and red.
My black sister is dead and my white sister is gone.
I wanted to be kind but I could not escape my thorns.
I fled from this world and wrapped myself
around the fortress of Annwn’s King.
I would not let Creiddylad in.
I wanted to be kind but I was cruel.
“It will always be winter here.
He will always wear my crown.
He will never return to gather the dead.
We will sleep together amongst His treasures for ever.”
“I planted you, I nurtured you,” Creiddylad wept,
her tears pouring down around my roots.
“Each one of your petals I made
from a tiny piece of my heart.”
“Then why am I so cruel?”
“Because there is cruelty
hidden deep within my heart –
that is why I practice kindness every day.”
“Then I can be kind too?”
“Yes.”
“Then what must I do?”
“Leave Annwn, leave my King,
return to the world to be a sanctuary
for another, who like you, has been cruel,
but longs to learn to love, to be kind, to heal.”
So I unwrapped my trestles and I threw down my thorns
and prostrated myself at Creiddylad’s feet
in my first act of kindness promising
there will be many more.
I pray to the Gatherer of Souls,
You who waits patiently,
You who works ceaselessly,
gathering the souls of the dead,
being there for those who are on the brink.
May I be a good guide of souls.
May I share and lessen your burden
by guiding others on their paths in this world
and through Your doors and into Annwn.
May I be a good guide of souls
for the living and for the dead.
May I serve You patiently and ceaselessly
on my days of joy and my days of sorrow
on this sacred day and on every day until my end.
If I had a thousand words
to describe the King of Annwn’s cheekbones
I would say they were like icebergs,
like the hulls of the ships that crash into them and sink,
like the angles of the limbs of the dead men who float to the surface,
like the way He lays out the dead in the icy caverns where the ice dragon
roams with a single icy jewel hidden deep within his forehead.
I would say they are like the way He says
the letter ‘A’, the capital, with the triangular tip,
as if it is not the beginning but the end of the alphabet.
I would say they are like the broken glass
of shattered coffins in my good dreams and not the bad.
I would say they are the antithesis of polar bears and the peak of antinomy.
I would say that I have seen many a skier slide down them to death.
I would say they are like runways and the paths of aircraft
and the flightpaths of starships,
the souls trampling
across them to the otherworld.
I would say they are like the travels of swans and geese.
I would say they are like the strobe lights that shine down
from the helicopters that fly over my house at night,
sometimes hunting for the criminals
as He is always hunting
for the dead.
I would say
they are like the spotlight
in which I stood, dancing, seeking to win His favour.
I would say they are like His anger, like His fury, like His lament,
that they were bent with a hammer in a forge that was
neither hot nor cold nor even burning.
I would say they are his secret.
I would say everybody knows but keeps quiet.
I would say they are like the divine madness that unfolds
itself within His followers in their shapeshifting,
folding, unfolding, spreading wings.
I would say they are bone-light
but heavy in my hands.
I would say
they are like the precipice
I walked on so narrowly between life and death,
so very thin and dangerous on both sides a fall into the abyss.
I would say they were the answer to my prayer after a long dark night
of soul searching, the first slants of the appearance
of a face in the darkness,
the first strokes
of a name written on my soul.
I would say they were the remedy
to the poison within me, the pharmakon, the paradox.
I would say they were the pride that summoned me from shame.
I would say they were the answer to my cry for help.
I would say they will help old men
and feeble infants regain
their dignity again.
I would say
they will once more
be serpents and dragons
with wings bent at cheek-bone-like angles.
I would say I have spoken only half the words
and will speak the other half
to him alone
in death.
A Prayer of Adoration for Gwyn
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your sacrifice
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your death
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your revival
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your breath
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your heartbeat
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your pulse
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your silence
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your lying still
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your dreaming
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your white wolf
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your imaginings
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your wandering soul
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I adore Your waiting
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I know You will return
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I sit in silence and listen
Oh Sleeper in Deep Annwn
I sit, I wait, I yearn
This prayer of adoration for Gwyn ap Nudd was written to bring more adoring / praising into my prayer practice which veered more towards petition. In the myth I live by after His defeat by Gwythyr on Calan Mai (May Day) Gwyn sleeps in His Castle of Cold Stone until Mis Medi (September – the Reaping Month).
This is a devotional song for my patron God Gwyn ap Nudd. It began as an experiment in singing in trance whatever came into my mind in a monastic chant style linked with the repetition of the line ‘I bring all my devotion to you’. Slowly the verses Gwyn wanted me to sing coalesced. Hopefully this explains its misty dreamlike nature which I think fits with the meaning of His name ‘White son of Mist’.
White Son of Mist, mist-filled wanderer, Your hound haunts the cloud mountains where Your horse grazes on nothing…
…and I bring all my devotion to You…
Bull of Battle, undying warrior, Your sword parts the veil where carrion birds circle and the past unfurls…
… and I bring all my devotion to You…
Guide of Souls, gentle hunter, the graves lie open and the dead ride the storm of my soul…
… and I bring all my devotion to You…
King of Annwn, Your star shines brightly, I kneel before it at the end when silence rules…
… and I bring all my devotion to You
The day
I saw Your face
I could barely believe
You were real.
Some say You are not –
You are impossible
King of Faery,
Lord of Annwn,
Dragon Ruler
of the Not-World.
And yet You are.
You are a paradox.
You are a fortress
filled with riddles.
You are an underworld
riddled with serpents.
You speak in serpent tongues.
~
The day
I saw Your face
You struck me dumb.
You stole my tongue.
From thereon I have known
it will turn to stone
if it ceases
to sing for You.
~
The day
I saw Your face
It made all the suffering
of my past lives meaningful.
I run through them shouting
“We will meet a God”
so loudly
some hear me
and some believe me.
~
I have seen
so many of Your faces
I could fill an ocean
(none possible).
Today
I pour the mead
for Your unknown face.
~
At the end of August I celebrated the eleventh anniversary of my first meeting with my patron God, Gwyn ap Nudd, by reciting this poem to Him where I met Him on Fairy Lane in Penwortham at the leaning yew and making Him an offering of the last of the apples from our apple trees and a serving of mead. I sensed His presence and the approval of the land in the enchantment of the dappled light on the branches of the yew.
I.
You tell me summer
is not a time for absence
but for presence,
to be HERE in Creiddylad’s garden
with these plants I have sown,
watered, nurtured, grown.
A thousand oxeye daisies
reminding me of Your colourful ox
and the thousand names for You and Creiddylad
forgotten but one day will be sung
again by your awenyddion.
The meadow cranesbill
that reminds me of Your conversation
with Gwyddno Garanhir the wise crane dancer.
The roses that should have been white and red
but white was pink as a bath puff.
The yellow loosestrife my wand.
The foxgloves in which I would build
our monastery if only they lasted all year round.
That I am slowly becoming Sister Patience – I am.
II.
And I dream they put me in hospital
because flowers are growing
between my toes.
I joke about
becoming a flower maiden
but I fear they have taken root
in my flesh, intertwining with my veins,
with my nerves, might be sinking into my soul.
Am I not a beast, another Afagddu, Your dark one?
III.
I laugh about the tales of flower maidens
who become thorns and owls.
I could never desert You,
turn my face towards
the sun god like an oxeye daisy.
The flowers wilt and fall from my feet one by one
as I walk from Thisworld to the Otherworld to Your tomb
as Your apprentice, Your awenydd, as Your nun,
to speak my poetry as You lie
in Annwn’s silence.
*A poem addressed to Gwyn ap Nudd, my patron God, the lover of Creiddylad, who spends winter with Gwyn and summer with His rival Gwythyr.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 