celebrant

The year the long way comes ‘round again, full of long rooted shadows and heart haunted rocks. The journey always a step at a time, this long toothed wander restless through time and continent. Roads older than the species followed over crest and crag, the deep tide of the cooling slabs of iron and stone expressed in bluff and peak, the old walk between hearts and hunger just another piece of cake. You take your turn at another reel around, from the pale thirsty filaments writhing around rock to the great splay of leaf and limb that sweeps clean your skies, you dance to polish all your stars.

The day drawls on here, the heat like a hush in the gray green light, slow and mosquito thick. The reach of your roots and the sway of your radiance touch my every breath, the dogs lying down and pollen everywhere. I shift my shoulders and clear my lungs. I see you standing beneath imagined trees, the rising and the fire. Your bones an old church, your blood the most devout of congregations, your foundation fixed in rock and firmament. The fire taking its heat from your shine. The altar only where your intention sets.

This is the story of the story you tell. This is the path where your feet touch the ground. One turn and all is same and different. One turn and the dark is coming hard. But your skirt sashays mischievously as your boots shape the earth, and you dance despite the song being wrong. Your day, the first of many others, all color and canopy. You stride along your bright and weeping path, a candle in the darkest night. You are the work and the earth. You eat the cake.