Three Swans at Armagh (23 September 2020)

There were Three Swans at Armagh[1]
revealing what they would
to those who could listen
upon the eaves of Autumn’s sway.                     1

I heard them in their meandering,
down along old Route Sixty-Six,
where the exit to the new highway
draws the unwary away from visions.                 2

Held in Autumn’s sway I went away
with the Three Swans of Armagh
in a vision of seeking and returning;
looking for the keys to a New Sídhe.[2]              3

On my way to an arcane bookstore
I had this vision of Swans and heard
their strange language – in bits and fits –
as the car rolled on down the road.                     4

I took a left at Armagh on the Way
expecting to see Saint Francis
at the Intersection where I had left
the Heart of the Hearth of my dreams
 _years ago.                                                         5

Yet he did not show, and so now on I go
down old Route Sixty-Six in a Glory,
awaiting New Insight to come in a Lorry,
with ghosts of my-self re-inscribing
_their Last Story!                                                 6

That night I dreamed, and heard them speak;
the Three Swans—to a dawdling mystic: 

  “There is a Deep Path you may take
  to reveal earthen truth in a Blue Lake
  upon which we Three Sisters swim.                   7

   "There is a New Key in which music
  could be sung;
  intoned in the interstitial places
  between one world and another. 

  "We are Three Sisters in this aisling;[3]
      heed us and follow_ as you will!”                   8

I once saw Three Swans at Armagh,
_each waddling in a dream so real_
that I now travel on_ dreaming them_
as in my Blue Woad Self[4] I reel!                       9
Amen.

- Montague Whitsel

[1] Originally penned at the Autumnal Equinox in 2005 after seeing three large white swans along the road as I travelled to a bookstore in a nearby town. The ordinary often inspires visions and dreams; out of the ordinary comes the extraordinary.

[2] Sídhe – as I intended the word here; a place of ‘crossing over’ between one imaginary world and another, or a place where we can re-imagine ourselves in retreat from the actual world in which we dwell as mortals.

[3] Aisling – a word from the Irish poetic tradition meaning “a vision poem.”

[4] Blue Woad Self – the true self; one’s ‘deep self.’ A term coming from Celtic mysticism, Blue Woad was a dye used to stain the skin. It became a metaphor for becoming your true, deep self.