The Calling of Ross Falls (22 September 2018)

Treading mortal upon the dew,

still irradiated by the Sun in her descent,

I crossed fresh-frosted fields

drawn into a brown sylvan glade

by the distinct sound

of a watery cascade.                                                  1

There I found the waterfall

I had so often heard of_

“It’s somewhere just outside of Ross.”

A local fable given-substance-to at last

I followed a field-mouse

down the sloping ledge

to the place where the stream

flows off the edge –

Plummeting down

into a deep crystal-clear pool

Twenty-seven feet below!                                                      2

“I had heard Ross Falls calling—

and accepted the claim as a Poet’s due!”

Solemnly flowing,

late was I going

to Ross Falls

in the glow of autumnal vespering,

with tides of waeccan mindfulness

drawing me

    ever-intrepid into the wilds of wisdom—  

up against the now sylvan bowers
of day-to-day revelation!                                                         3

Taking my bearings

from a plenitude of dogwood berries

suspended like runes upon their boughs—

I ambled

into the gray-shadowed gully.

Across the sloping forest floor

I saw the stream wriggling—

fresh from the hillsides—

with ever-cleansing graces;

reaching out to those

who would reveal her thunder!                                   4

“I once heard the Call of Ross Falls

and accepted the claim as a Dreamer’s due!”

And then_

I went dreaming in the flowing,

falling down over

the ledge_

no longer perched on the edge;

my self, cascading down across the falls_

like an angel truant

in transit between two sylvan realities!

It was a re-creational escapade

in poetic license!                                                           5

There I found_

glimmering evidences of Wisdom—

calling out to this Forest’s Wanderer;

for I had long imagined myself

 walking there;

almost for ‘long ages’ before

my impetuous descent

in dreaming’s sway!

And as I went I knew—

I am_

the always-sauntering Poet of the Wood,

merrily pledging every rapids,

taking the chute and the cataract

which lead to earthen revelations!                                6

“I once heard Ross Falls calling to me—

and accepted the claim as a Witch’s due!”

And it seemed to me that

sometime in the night—I heard monks,

solemnly singing their sacred songs,

down there in the vale where

they were

interweaving their music

with Earth & Water

in their sequestering, aesthetic way!                                      7

“I once heard the earthen monks singing;

down at the foot of Ross Falls_

and took their invitation as an ogham of life.”

Fleetly knowing—

I sought the blessed scars

that they were showing me;

from which I hoped to draw

the succor of my next incarnation

as a Poet of Earthen Dreaming!                                            8

Once upon a new sylvan morning,

I woke up wandering at Ross Falls,

water streaming down

over the rocks

into the chasm

of my mortal becoming;

_and I thought of myself as a New Being!                    9
So mote it be.

Ode to the Starry Reach (1 September 2018)

- Montague Whitsel

When I think of the stars

gold and sapphire, ruby and emerald—

and how far away they are_

I am astounded in my aloneness;

lifted up to where I never thought to be—

where a human becoming is terribly free.                     1

When I see the stars up in the sky

I boggle upon the empty seas

and reel from a motionless sickness.

I feel unbounded by

tremendous vast circumferences

without a center—

sending all our dreams out centripetally

to the hedgeless realms of space.                                2

Reflecting upon the stars in the sky

I am drawn away from the sun

by a cosmic curiosity—

No more do I luxuriate in its brilliance

in summer, nor its white winter face.

The nearness of the sun, our star,

is reflected forever

in the distant humming of the stars—

x-rays, radio waves, gamma rays.                                3

“We can hear them sing, but we cannot

see their ghostly tracks.”

And when I think upon the stars,

sailing throughout the cosmos,

journeying in purposeless intent

further and further from us—

I long to shout to the nearest sun,

and reel-in its strangeness,

hoping to hear a shout in return,

before we fly forever out of range.                                4

“Lost in voids, un-renown for being Nothing,

we travel always further from our home.”

When I think of the stars,

Yellow and blue, green and red—

And how beautiful in power they are;

all sensed meaning goes horse-braying

across my earth-green horizons,

seeking for shelter—

and I am left to work it all out anew.                             5

And the stars are no more beacons;

much less gods, angels or saints –

they are epiphanies

in the stupendous darkness that percolates

beyond and within all existence.

The dark of the ever-expanding Night

embraces the light we seem to love

more, within a cold shivery veil,

and makes us think of the emptiness

beyond and within ourselves.                        6

When I meditate upon the cosmos—

I am in the Night, with the stars

and the planets in their orbits.

And there I stay, safe in Nothing—

encircled at random

by the circus of the stars in their galaxies.

Sombered in their wandering presence_

I feel myself illuminated at my own center.                    7

“The sun and the stars are one and the same,

near and far,

and from within the vortex of Nowhere

I can see their kinship realized.”                               8

And I think_

when we wish upon the stars—

shining, twinkling jewels set in black jet;

do we ever fear but that they are near,

and can be fathomed by mind and heart?

And are we not bewondered in their proximity,

reaching up to touch them

on the celestial stage above?

Do we not see in them our reflections?                         9

And so now,

when I meditate upon the stars,

topaz and cerulean, olive and crimson—

I stagger in their nearness;

and they show to me our kinship,

for we are all descendants of the stars;

children of the universe

which calls us to cognizance

of our own point of origin;

somewhere ‘back there’—

in the Deep Time of Space.              10

Amen.



[1] Originally written in 2003 and attributed to the fictional character of Edward Whittier, it is published at the end of my book, Heart and Hearth (2009) pp 601-603.