Pagan Poems............

Catechism for a Witch’s Child

When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird’s wing

tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open spilling
streams of molten ice to earth

and tell them how you drink
a holy wine of honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother who never taught you
death was life’s reward

but who believed in the earth
and the sun
and a million, million light years
of being

©  1986 J.L.Stanley

From "Labyrinth Poems by J.L. Stanley"

GOING WODWO

SHEDDING MY SHIRT, my book, 
my coat, my life,

leaving them empty husks 
and fallen leaves

going in search of food
and for a spring

of sweet water.

I'll find a tree as wide a ten fat men,

clear water rilling over its grey roots,

berries I'll find, 
and crab apples and nuts,

and call it home.

I'll tell the wind my name,
and no one else.

True madness takes
or leaves us in the wood

halfway through all our lives. 
My skin will be my face now.

I must be nuts. 
Sense left with shoes and house,

my guts are cramped. 
I'll stumble through the green

back to my roots, and to leaves, and thorns, and buds,

and shiver.

I'll leave the way of words 

to walk the wood.

I'll be the forest's man, 
and greet the sun.

And feel the silence blossom on my tongue

like language.




By Neil Gaiman

The Green Man

I walked among the trees
I wore the mask of the deer

remember me,
try to remember
I am that laughing man
with eyes like leaves

When you think that winter will never end
You will feel my breath, warm at your neck.

I will rise in the grass, a vine caressing your foot.
I am the blue eye of a crocus 
  opening in the snow
  a trickle of water, a calling bird,
  a shaft of light among the trees.

You will hear me singing
among the green groves of memory,
the shining leaves of tomorrow.

I'll come
with daisies in my hands,
we'll dance among the sycamores
once more



by Lauren Raine

  EARTH, WIND, FIRE AND WATER

Stone, speak to me.
My mayfly voice flickers,
flares, goes out.
I am listening.

Where are your roots?
What secret waters that vein and course
the darkness, humming of distance
and falling years, of bones,
and pottery shards, fossils played out,
smoothed by waters past memory or telling?

Stone, you will be my teacher.

Hawk, speak to me.
From your flight I learn of narrow vision,
the blindness of small creeping things.
Fly high, seer, dance an incantation
for the far journey.

What flickering shadows
do you see, in this, and the other world?
Far seer wings without mercy,
hope, or pride calling vision.

Hawk, you will be my teacher.

Fire, speak to me.
I am listening. Enter me, burn in me
and teach me to burn.

Illuminate the shadows pressing
into this careful house of sticks I have built.
Burn away what is no longer useful.
Burn me empty and full, teach my feet
to dance the changing way.
Fill my blazing hands with shaping,
my heart with the heat of love.

Fire, you will be my teacher.

Raindrops fall,
from the branch of a black oak tree
their Telling is many and one.
Rain, speak to me. I am listening.

You are a multitude, your story grows
in the telling of stream, river.
Each thirsty mouth opens as you pass
into the mouth of the ocean, singing

I hold this Song to me. It is not my own.
I am a part of it.

Rain, you will be my teacher.