Nine Knotted Thread

Writings

  • Hounds Tongue

    As I walked by the river, I saw life ready itself for autumn. Plants hanging heavy with seeds preparing their last acts of life. I came across a man turning his pockets out, and rummaging around. I asked if he’d lost something.
    This is what he said.

    “What discretion lies in the downcast eyes in the stand of the Houndstongue.
    How the moon and the wind and the people of the riverbend trust unto her what we will never know.
    Under what hoods so small are secrets stored however fateful, frivolous, inspired or bored.
    Whispered or sung on the Snail’s trace, or in the gossip of the Aster washing her face.

    And oh what burden bears heavy our Hounds tongue’s head and swells her lungs to burs.
    She droops and sways as if to say that secrets can no longer stay.
    ‘Anyone please’, she cries, ‘come near’ to find relief from the faintest brush
    and sticks herself to those that come close in places they’ll never look.

    If you find one, I hear, you’ll have every secret whispered that year.
    Although I’ve tried to no avail,
    I’ve planted and watered, watched and waited,
    and instead of secrets
    I reap solely their keeper.”

    The man reached toward me and from my shirt, pulled a tiny bur.

    “This one’s for you, now do what you will”

    And with that he turned and walked away.

    The sun reached the mountain’s peak, as he stepped now out of sight.
    And at this time it must have been fated, that a trading of tongues took place at dusk

    That little bur gripped to my palm and pulled itself right in
    for from my lips poured poetry of everything that’s kept from me.
    It was in a voice, though, scarcely mine, that I heard her lively speak.
    In a language I have never heard, though I understood every word.
    While I recall all that was said in the time of that setting sun.
    It would not do, until violets bloom red, to utter it ever again.

  • In a Garden Gaunt and Gangly

    As the heat retreats for a day or two and the wind starts to shift, they bring to me a nursery rhyme that I dimly remember being sung from my window. As I laid there in my crib, it was a voice that wasn’t exactly my mothers though I called it the same.

    This is what the wind now said.

    In a garden gaunt and gangly

    stems celebrate their spindly virtue

    and pat themselves on the back

    for the thinnest shadow cast

    Until a family of Fennel,

    not familiar with the fanfare of despair

    fanned out their feathers

    to catch some air.

    Much to the shock of Nasturtium and Mustard 

    and the humbug of old horse radish

    who spoke up with a speech on sparecity 

    he had misremembered from a time before any of the attending members were even sprouts

    Mother Fennel brushed it by,

    not without care,

    but fair to say,

    with an assuredness that made  even Artichoke silent.

    “This discourse of denial” 

    She said

    “Not only defeats the design 

    but deafens the Delighted one

    who, moves from within the pith,

    like a crane fly to the river.

    like a trill to the bird,

    who, speaks,

    not as one fishes for words,

    but whose words weave

    A net of splendor with witch to fish.

    So still your ire

    of this iridescence.

    For more truth can be told in an eye full of delight

    than in any rehearsed rendering of a story forgotten to the night.

    For what good is a garden that gouts out it’s own green?

    And worthy for what when we’re only in wane?

    Now who will step into splendor and more?

    For it was stored in your seed to be fed from the deep.

    At this the clouds clapped having finally been freed

    from the withholding of need bound down tight to the ground.

    They came close to see this peacock of plants 

    for her opulent show, none could scarcely oppose.

    They let loose a rain they’d been longing to give, should one only look up and like just to take in.

    In this garden once droughty and dwindling thin

    whose seeds were strewn there and left without care,

    now lived plants that grew greener than any would dare.

    They shamelessly spread over each inch of dirt

    and gave in their beauty far more than they took

    For this family of fennel

    who once led the way

    knew the ways of the wild and in within their strong stalks

    housed a wisdom so old, that it broke every lock.

    Of course this isn’t the way I remember it, as all songs turn and change as they travel. So perhaps as this breeze finds its way to you, it will bring something quite new.

  • Welcome to Nine Knotted Thread

    Writings on Trolldom, folk magic, traditional practice, and the living relationship between people and the landscapes they inhabit.