The Wildwood Tarot – The Sanctuary of Vindos

‘A Rainbow Bridge that rises and greets your foot…
will carry you over the void as you step, trusting and empowered, into the unknown…’
– 0 The Wanderer, The Wildwood Tarot

I stand
with one foot
on Astley Moss,

rising onto tiptoe,
the other raised, flexed,
heel up, toe down,

like the hoof of a winged horse.

I still know little
about where I came from
and less about where I am going.

There is little comfort or security
in the shifting mists below,
haunted by the ghosts,

the bog bodies,
the severed heads,
the voice of Worsley Man.

They are all telling me,
compelling me to move on,
unlike restless spirits.

I am reminiscing
about the day I drove into
the end of the rainbow on the M6,
throwing up splashes of rain
like fairy gold.

‘Do Not Look Back.’

I hear His arcane commandment.

My wings are spread and deep within
I know it is time to move on.

‘guided by Barinthus to whom the waters and the stars of heaven were well known. With him steering the ship we arrived’
Vita Merlini

What stars will you navigate by when they have fallen from the sky?
Where is North when there is no North Star?
How will the swans fly?

When your boat is stuck on a turning oar in the blackest of midnights
shall I tie my blindfold with a sailor’s knot?
Trust your sightless eyes?

Speak the words that have never been heard this side of the sunrise?
Place my payment shiny and cold in your spitless
mouth that never lies?

Your cloak of stars ragged torn will you wrap around my shoulders tight
as you swear by dead sea-gods we will arrive
on your boat that flies

on the wings of a swan where the sea is filled with the Northern Lights?
Find the frost-dark isle of my mysterious god where the sun
escapes the sunrise?

Where the living are dead and the dead alive and the blind no longer blind
will we find the oar, the compass, the stars, bring them back
with the starlight?