Throw the Bones Again

Posies withered planting lazuli stars in sands, 

and you have times in your ears bygone alive. 

Return, wee one in the sun, 

sickle honed of cianalas at your waist, 

she who dreams like lake ladies 

with their mist-locked lochs of 

apples so far from the silver tree.  

They told you to sit waiting for princes but 

you are not woven from that sort of story, no.

Return, dust of heavenly bear stars, 

american you were born but once.  

Plant your feet in machair that 

gives way to rock pools in the skies.  

Catch the faery tales true wandering through 

time, through space, bring books back 

to Earth with mirth to plant them in sìth firth. 

Return to song sing like bones reverberating 

wrestling every snake to the ground, 

for here it is Brìde’s day eternally.   

Cadences carried on lilting tongues, 

it is time to evoke your Gaelic again.

But leave psalms in bloody ages, 

errant weeds, no, nay, never again.

Return with the mists in the air, 

ice clinging to your lashes once fear frozen. 

Shake your hair like Cailleach, the runes 

read there, story given, throw the bones again. 

Loss weep like Bean-nighe setting 

clothes for dead, braiding their hair 

for journeys onward and so many are they now. 

Return, child, to an tuath to grow 

talls on hills wyld and wooded, to tor 

climb like picts and enter through the starred gate 

never vanquished, only hidden. 

The hawthorn gives it away. 

Child, this will never require that which they took, 

verse keys not vein keys here. 

Home it welcomes you, connects you restored.  

She who plants prospering lazuli stars in firth, return

to times in your ears bygone but alive like birth.