Creation and Re-Creation Story by Justin@WildSpiritPaths.com

I wrote this poem while on retreat in Shenandoah National Park, a place of my resurrection to borrow a term from Celtic spirituality. I was struck by the rhythms of the elements and how Raven played with all of them to weave them together with her joy.

The wind buffets the lichen home -rock

Where I sit - all in blue.

Where there is wind, there is Raven,

Sky-dancing.

A streak of open wings - black against

The parchment of cloud

Skywriting, ancient

Calligraphy in deep-midnight-ink, now quicksilver in the sun.

No smoke or trailing sign

Just joy and surrender to life in her ceremony.

Raven tumbles,

then rises above the hollow.

Now, flung far left to the next lap between mountain knees

She meets another Raven.

Two sky-dancers float, fall, spin

And embrace the wind.

Three days past, I first saw Raven

with a small orb in her mouth,

Riding the gusts and whirls of

Wind.

Sheets of rain swayed

Waterfalls toward us.

Why didn’t I open my hands

To receive the dance,

Sway with the rain,

Welcome the seed?

Raven was looking for a

bare rock slab with a tiny splintering.

She dropped the seed and the

Rain danced, filling the trough.

The grey lichen blushed green.

Bursting the seed coat with the rhythm of dance

Rain and Raven bloomed

A mountain.

Could all the trillium and violets

Flowing like a murmur of laughter along the worn trails

Be gifts of

Raven and Rain?

Raven returned to me on Crescent Rock

To drop the seed into

The fissure of my heart.

Rain greened the earth of my body and

Birdsong blazed.

In the rainbow light after the storm

a white trillium bloomed in the shelter of my ribs.

Raven and Rain danced on in the valley,

Silver black play of wings, water, and

Light,

Blazing a trail of damp earth

In flower.