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.