MAGICKRY - A Gypsy Heart

As Autumn strides laughing across the fields, scattering raindrops and berries, I thought it might be a good time for some unabashed romanticism. 
Life teaches us two things:
1. Romance does the heart good and brings a smile to the soul - and,  on these darker and chillier evenings, who would deny us that? 
2. Small boys will always be totally captivated by a smile and a wild, gypsy heart ;)

Magickry - A Gypsy Heart

There was a pretty gypsy maid

In auburn glades she’d wend her ways

And soft among the elder’s shade

In summer’s haze, and silvered days

The oak and ash would sing to her

And bring to her their autumn blaze

And butterflies would follow her

And over her, in thistle-down

Would thread a web so spider thin

Of rainbow hues to dress her in

And dew-gems for a crown.

She sang her songs of mystery

And wizardry and magickry

And spells that bind and mimicry

And filigree the stars that spun

Around her head with silken threads

Of orbits dark and distant suns

In ancient lore and alchemy,

And rune-wise, the words that she

Would weave among the grass   

 

She found a world of gallantry

Of errantry and pageantry

And though she longed to tarry there

And lose her heart and marry there

Her gypsy heart would carry there

The far off winds that harried her

Of distant lands that promised her

With silken words admonished her

Of oases green and fountains tall

Of stormy seas at the cliffs of fall

And zephyrs breathed vermilion

And gilded gold pavilions

And stallions and sherbet from

The opium fields of Avalon

In darker days, the wind would say

“There are other paths that call your way”

At night these paths would sing to her

And bring to her, and wing to her

The friends of her, of wings and fur

With wilder hearts astir.

By badger light and lantern’s sigh

And lonely flies the vixen’s cry

And all would come to sit with her

With heart and soul close-knit with her

Find comfort ‘neath the ash and briar

They sought beside her dreaming fire.

When alone among the moon beam’s dance

Schoolboy did chance to steal a glance

And held by her smile of golden bliss

He sought her kiss upon his cheek

And by this feat, he’d be a king.

As sparks flew up from firelight’s glow

And fireflies show the crystal’s globe

She held his hand so merrily

That happily and gallantly

He walked this world as new.

And now beneath the forest’s moon

And soft among the moths that flew

And swans that glide down woody steams

In dreams, he sings her tune.

WHEN we STAND...

... beneath the silent bowl of stars

      and look up into the fire of Cassiopea's beauty.

Let us not fill it with questions

                   or doubts

                           or certainties.


But let us also be silent

      living together this one perfect moment.

Friends from my Bookshelf ~ 2

Book: Century 21 (1968) Project Sword. London: Century 21 Publishing and City Magazines Ltd.

Given to me by my Uncle and Aunt, Denham, Middlesex, Christmas Eve 1968.


Details:

• Hardback with slightly stubbed corners
• Spine still (surprisingly) intact
• A cover designed to captivate the heart of a small boy
• Thick, slightly rough cartridge-paper pages that make the sound of thunder when you turn them
• Smells of the future and bedtimes and hot water-bottles
• Original price marked on inside front page: 12/6d (or 62.5 New Pence) 
• Filled with memories and excitement and snows of distant winters

Family Christmases had a European flavour to them. Each Christmas Eve my mother's brother and sister (with their families) would meet up and give out our gifts. In some ways, this was better even than Christmas; it was like having Christmas with the knowledge that Christmas was still to come. Best of all my uncle worked in publishing with Gerry Anderson's TV Century 21 and  that meant, a brand new annual each Christmas filled with colour and energy and the mysteries that had something to do with television. We did not have a television and so there was an aura of mystique about the books we would be getting. The glossy hardboard covers and the lavish primary colour also gave them an air of extravagance - like a glass of pineapple juice or finding your very own box of chocolate fingers at the bottom of your Christmas pillowcase.

The white Christmas of 1968 is tattooed upon my memories as the archetype of all Christmases. It was how Christmas should be (and now never will be again). I can remember walking up our garden path in that muffled stillness of a snowy night, half asleep, clutching this book with my other presents (soaps and sweets and forgotten toys). Soft rolling drifts of snow glowed blue under a crystal night. It was to be the first year that I knew what was meant by the phrase, 'took your breath away.' It was how snow flared with tiny colours; a rainbow of pixie lamps in the wash of our kitchen light. It is the first year I recall my hands burning with cold from playing in the snow, of repeatedly falling on the hallway floorboards because of the impacted snow under my wellingtons, of being aware of the future... and being electrified by it.   

It was the Christmas that Apollo 8 orbited the moon. I watched it on my aunt and uncle's (the same one who gave me this book) new colour television. It was before anyone had landed on the moon, but the impossible was reachable. I fell in love with science - the words, the beauty of formulae, the worlds it disclosed. I ached to be an astronaut. 

I had not heard of 'Project Sword'(an attempt at a spin-off by Century 21), but was instantly captivated. Commander Bill Janson (a photo of my uncle was used in the annual for his 'data file') was my hero and I faced the playground walking in his shoes. I was fast thinking, I was compassionate and strong. I was a man to whom men looked in times of crisis.

It is only on re-reading them as an adult that I can identify a disturbingly dark subtext in the comic strip stories that is so utterly at odds with my philosophy on life. It seems strange and out of step with even the values of those times; a sinister conservatism that views all outside 'the system' with suspicion and violence. My eight year old eyes were totally unaware of it. The future of my universe was much bigger than that.

Perhaps, just as the world seemed to lose nerve while teetering on the edge of a future that held no barriers, it is fitting that I should find cracks and the shadows of adults' nightmares in the book that inspired me so much and made me look up in wonder at the moon on those lost snowy nights.

The stories may have lost their thrill, but the memories still fire in me an enthusiasm that goes beyond simple nostalgia. An awkward friend perhaps, but a friend nonetheless.  

What is THAT whispered on the WIND...

... by the stone rings of Avebury?


Deep echoes like the oceans' storm-bells tolling, chiming soft against the flesh of my soul.


Strange music that plays along the wide sweep of downland ridge and makes my heart beat faster. Perhaps our paths are really guided by songways; ancient music, as gold as the dawn mist, that sing to our hearts and call us back to our first roots in this rolling landscape of flint and chalk and wide skies.



Is that what takes us out of the town and out from the urbanity of life; out of the valleys and on to the downs? This way of song that threads its path through the wildness of wind and sheep and histories that are no longer told. Is that what brings me back to this place of deep echoes of the soul?

So what is that whispered on the wind by the stone rings of Avebury?


Where, Tibetan-like, coloured ribbons fly upon ancient branches and prayers swim upon the air. At owl-time when the badger prowls, does God, with steaming breath and earth-stained hands, stand beneath this tree and let these prayers run through his fingers? Perhaps, he too is touched by their hope. That we may follow the laughter on wilder winds.

An audio version of this post

The MOON and VENUS...

... ride high over Sunrising Hill,
       on this rook ravaged dawn.

A robin on a fence watches me
      watching the waning moon and Venus
      soar the polished sky.

We both fly off on ravens' wings.