Vindos Vindos Vindos
by the Winter Wind
I call to You
Vindos Vindos Vindos
Father of Night
oh hear my cry
Vindos Vindos Vindos
in the darkness
make me one with You
Vindos Vindos Vindos
heal my wounds
on this dark night
Audio HERE
*A chant to Vindos for all those in need of healing over the dark moon and winter solstice period.
Winter Solstice 2022
‘Gwyn ap Nudd, helper of hosts,
armies fall before the hooves of your horse
as swiftly as cut reeds to the ground.’
‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’
Three years have passed
since the last time I celebrated
the winter solstice here – the reeds still stand
as do the standing stones and the tradition
of dancing down the sun.
Who or what has fallen since the beginning of the disease?
More than armies, 181,000 deaths to this day.
The reeds still stand but something
was cut down within me when I cleared other reed beds
in the name of good service, knowing they would grow again, strove
to become a good custodian of the Water Country but was not accepted.
I fell and got trampled beneath the huge round hooves of Your horse.
I’m not dead yet, I picked myself up, got back on my bicycle
but appeared a stranger at the Pagan gathering
in my hi-vis jacket with my cycle helmet
needing to leave before it got dark
and chasing the sun west to the place I call home.
Here I attend the work of putting the cut reeds together again
reciting not the names of long dead warriors
Gwenddolau, Gwallog, Llachau…
but making a new bed
for the lost and weary souls
who half-died and want to grow tall.
The reeds say that we will grow again no matter
how hard we are trampled by the hooves of horses to the ground.
I.
It’s a sunless solstice
on my bridge over the Ribble
but yet the river flows
as if she has done so
since the beginning of time
in spite of the stopping and
starting of the ice floes.
II.
I remember how once-upon-a-time
I held the sun in my hand
like the monster with the monstrous
CLAW
and wonder if I am the monster from
beneath the bridge who stole
the girl whose bike lights shine above.
III.
As the streetlights light up one-by-one
I ask Belisama – Great Goddess of the Ribble,
Old One, Shining One, Mighty One,
how many suns and how many stars,
how many daughters have swum
down your river to the GREAT BEYOND?
Will they ever be returned like Peter Pan
and the Lost Boys from Never Never Land,
like Pryderi, like Mabon, like the unnamed girls
whose names never reached the tongue-tip of song?
IV.
A sunless solstice, bike lights shine bright,
past Tinkerbell’s Nursery
I cycle on.
For three days
she journeyed there
and for three days
journeyed back
to return a lost son
to return a lost brother
and I alone stand witness
at the standing stone
that might have been
placed here for this day
as his golden rays shine
over the marshland.
How did she win him
back from Winter’s King?
That is for her alone to know
and the birds who sing.
This poem is a follow up of my poem ‘I light a candle for Epona‘ based on the journey of the Great Mare to the Otherworld to win back her lost son. I linked this to my brother’s period of hospitalisation. I’m glad to say he is back now and on the road to recovery so many thanks to the mare goddess and to those who sent good wishes and lit candles.
The photographs are of the sun beginning to set over the winter solstice stone at the stone circle at Brockholes Nature Reserve and over the visitor village and Meadow Lake.
I.
There is no celebration tonight
but the celebration
of being here –
friends and family
although some are distant.
There are no gatherings
at circles of stone.
No matter –
the solstice sun
has not shown up either.
II.
The clouds are grey
as the smoke pouring from Whitfires
where two old friends choose
to walk the fishery
of old bridge
and goosander
and the moss
that is now farmland
and isn’t quite houses yet.
We raise the oddest of toasts
just out of smell of the recycling centre
on the edge of a muddy track.
III.
And where are you my god?
My King of Winter
in the not-quite drizzling rain?
Are you on the empty train
that I fail to photograph
because it would be
unseemly to pull you from
the invisible realm?
IV.
Where are you going
Gatherer of Souls
on the train track
from Ormskirk to Preston?
My thoughts are ominous
as the virus that culls
all thoughts
of celebration.
V.
I remember
my childhood fears
of being the train
bricked up.
How I fled
from the Mile tunnel
where your ghost-lights dance
and where you a man
somehow bore
a son.
VI.
You speak to me
without tracks
united without
the worldwide web say:
“We must celebrate
for the living and the dead.”
Thus I raise this poem
to thee.
I.
As the longest night looses
darkest claws I walk amongst shadows
at dawn where moonlight floods
through the arms of trees
and a solitary lamppost lights the vale.
II.
River-trees stand stark and tall,
consistent in her mind’s
unravelling of currents and tides,
cormorants and gulls,
a ragged heron.
III.
The host’s roar to a lullaby
quells as moon leads dawn
over chiming hills to be swallowed
by cloud as the hunt returns
to graveyard and mound.
IV.
My lord of the fay
makes his presence known.
He speaks to the mist within my bones
like the lych gate unfastening,
awenydd– my magic word.
V.
The spirit paths are mine
to walk for an evanescent pulse
of dawn. Time stands still
from vale to hill and the stream
sings: awenydd, awenydd.
From a night of long sleep
In the dark of the womb
Maponus Maponus
Awaken the dawn
With a beam of bright youth
From a wild shy horse
Maponus Maponus
Illumine the morn
In a smiling ascent
To a shining throne
Maponus Maponus
Rise high at noon
Emblazoning clouds
And falling through leaves
Maponus Maponus
Colour the eve
With a sinking yawn
To the arms of trust
Maponus Maponus
Descend at dusk
The Sanctuary of Vindos 