(Poem) Bone Woman Keens, Arlene Bailey

The Bone Woman keens
as the Banshee’s screech
pierces the darkness.
Women everywhere
engage in laments of
all matters and feelings.

What happened?
Times change.
Worlds alter.
Fires still burn as
hearths warm and feed.
Still there is something
horribly wrong.

Cauldrons and drums
become the tools of choice.
Some scry and throw the bones
as others sing, chant or dance.
Some put pen to paper
or brush to paint
as others look to the stars.

Teach me to keen over the bones,
how to call the Old Ones.
Teach me to sing a soulful
song of lament as I
howl like the Wolf and
scream like the Banshee.

A shift has altered everything.
Balance is but a dream,
a memory of before as
truth and lies now comingle
in a knotted mess.

Call in the Bone Woman
Call in the Banshee
Call in…
The Keener
Medicine Woman
Witch
Priestess
and Manbo
Conjure Woman
and Bruja,
The Seer
Oracle
Pythia
and
Volga
The Hag
The Mystic
Curandera
Old Antlered One
The Ancestors.

Call in the Animals,
Guardians and Spirit Guides
with their all-knowing wisdom
of how to work with the
Elementals and Spirits,
Plant Devas and Unseen Forces.
The Dragons with their knowing of
the Ley Lines and paths that sustain.

Call in the Great Wisdom of how to
walk on the Earth in balance with
The Great She.

Goddess
Gaia
Pacha Mama
Mother Earth

Your human children are lost,
caught up in modernity,
caught up in greed.

Caught up in any and all things
that make their lives convenient
at the cost of your life, at the
cost of the lives of your children,
at the cost of their children.

Help us remember the old ways.
The ways of the Ancestors, the
near ones and the bone people.
Open our hearts to awareness
of the Other rather than the
focus only on the Self.
Teach us the old ways of
guidance from the stars,
recognition of pathways that
sustain, reverence for the rituals
of life which connect us all.

The time is dire.
Friends and family are dying,
but not only human ones…
Animals and Plants,
Planets and Stars,
Earth Herself
as we reject the
Great Mystery in our
frenzied obsession to
explain, label and
control everything.

The Bone Woman keens
as the Banshee’s screech
pierces the darkness.
Humans everywhere
dead and dying as
Death comes walking.
The Bone Woman
sings a song of lament,
keening for that now lost.

As Death stalks the Land,
the Moon rises high.
Women gather in circle,
waiting for the scream
of the Banshee that signals
the drumming, calling
horse to take riders
to the other worlds,
to gather messages and rituals,
words of prophecy.
Priestesses dance into ecstacy
to bring change on this plane
while Fierce Warrioresses stand
guard as each woman plucks her
part of the web to ripple out
the medicine brought back.

The Bone Woman keens
as Banshees screech and
the Women reweave a
container to hold us all.

The Voice of Ritual.
echoes in these times.

__________________________________

[Author’s Note: In Irish mythology, the Banshee can be either a Bean Sidhe whose screech warns of a coming death or the Bean Chaointe, the one who keens the song of lament once death has arrived.]

(Meet Mago Contributor) Arlene Bailey

(Meet Mago Contributor) Arlene Bailey.