This poem is as close as I can get to casting a spell. Here is a YouTube video of the poem recorded while I was creating it here.   Don’t watch this expecting a director’s cut on the creation of the poem, but rather watch it breathe in and get more verbose and then watch it breathe out and get cleaner until it lived and needed no further resuscitation.

 

 

Desire Lines:  A Hymn to Our Farm

Thoughts about thoughts.
Axheads and handles,
root cellars and fireflies and the firmament.
I walk with these thoughts
down an old path in my heart
past the school bus
that brought us here,
tramping the hollow way
past the whispering barred owl babies
down to the ford at the creek choked with horsetail.

[REFRAIN]

I map it out,
inkstains of honor,
ley lines of faerie power
drawn down in eldertime
and now
with gold-leaf and place names
inked
with heavy calligraphic tattoos.

[REFRAIN]

This path,
this map,
these thoughts,
a desire line
that has kept this ground
sacred & clear
until now.

[REFRAIN]

Refrain:
Observe and sing,
observe and sing,
Praise the path and map
and dance the sick away