There are many paths to Gwyn. 

~

There is the bard in the mead hall. The one who sings at the feast in Caer Vedwit, the Mead Feast Fort, in Gwyn’s hall, in a heavy blue-grey chain. 

I sung there once, where the harp of Teirtu plays on its own. Where the ghost of Maponos walked. Where the fair folk and the dead dance and mix and eat the meat of leaves whilst the king watches from his throne of bones.

I drank enough mead to feast the dead for centuries and took the songs of our king to the halls of towns and cities, to libraries, pubs, shopping centres.

I sang in chains, tried to strangle myself with them, then cast them off. 

I walked this path for a while but this path was not for me. 

~

There is the path of the madman, the wild woman, the path of the followers of Myrddin Wyllt. Those who are afflicted by trauma and by the claws of Annwn torn out of themselves, split open, as if by a spear, their bird spirits flying out. 

Hawk spirits, golden eagle spirits, goldcrest spirits, passerines in strange migrations. All heading to their forests of Celyddon. To pines and raided gold mines. To the damps of the Celtic rainforests where it rains five days a week. To the remnants of woodlands in the suburbs along the trickle of suburban streams.

I was the wren in the bush singing of how I tore myself open for our God and how my heart was my sacrifice on mid-winter’s day still beating beneath the yew.

A part of me is still there, singing for Him, loud yet hidden. No-one hears. 

I walked this path for a while but this path was not for me. 

~

There is the path of the cave woman, the inspired one, the witch. Orddu ‘Very Black’, Orwen ‘Very White’, all their ancestors around the cauldron. 

Black skin, white hair, white skin, black hair, wolf furs, corvid feathers, black beaks.

Those who sing with crows and wash the skulls of their ancestors in holy springs. Cast the wolf bones. Lie beneath wolf furs waiting for visions of the Deep.

Those who drink the awen, scry in the cauldron like our God, sing of past and future things. Swallow stars. Universes. Things too big to speak. Die in His arms.

I swallowed the star of the King of Annwn and it is within me still and I am still in my cave after all these centuries with a murder of crow women inside me. 

The nun in her cell who still flies, still runs, divines with black feathers.

I walked this path for a while and have decided it is for me. 

I wrote this poem as a step along my journey in discerning what it means to be an inspired one and nun of Annwn devoted to Gwyn ap Nudd in relation to the Brythonic tradition and my solitary life in suburban Penwortham.