[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.]
Art, Meraylah Allwood, InANutshellArt, https://www.etsy.com/shop/InANutshellArt
I’ve held it all in,
all the hopes and dreams,
the cries of despair…
held it all in until today.
Until today when I felt this net of despair
fall over me choking me, strangling me,
blocking the air so I couldn’t breathe.
I saw her tears as we locked eyes and
and knew in our hearts that the soul,
my soul, is now on the auction block.
I keened for hours in the woods.
Keened for what has already been lost…
what is currently being lost…
what is potentially still to come.
I made altars and offered ritual.
Screamed guttural prayers
to the Mother of All
that enough is enough!
Still the tears came, but the
keening vocals grew quieter
as I had no more to give.
Even the crows and hawks went silent
sensing a pause of sacred reverence.
Where to now I asked?
Where do you want to go, She replied?
I don’t know.
I’m tired and disillusioned
and want to crawl into my cave
and have the Old Ones
– the recent ancestors and
the bone ancestors – wrap
their arms around me.
Then that is what you do.
But before you go, you offer…
One last prayer to the dreamtime.
One last offering of hope planted
in these darkening times.
One last ritual of rebirth that even now
gestates in the womb of the Mother,
that gestates in the womb and heart of you.
One last offering given with all the fight of
the Warrioress that lives within you.
Then you rest and wait and trust the
Ancient Ones and more recent Ancestors
to guide you through to the
place of the next light.
What if there is no more light I ask?
Only darkness and evil?
Evil has and will always exist,
but so does the light.
Find that place and know
the light always returns.
Perhaps dimmed,
Perhaps brightly illuminative,
but the light always returns.
Until that time…
Rest so you are able to still build
altars to new possibilities and
keen over the bones of what is lost.
Rest until that time you can
give voice to the both/and.
Until that time, vision and dream and
allow the Ancestors to wrap you in
ancient wisdom, ancient knowing
as you embrace the sacred dark.
Until such time, the light rises like
the woman you are, blazing and
empowered and screaming like the
Banshee taking no prisoners, as you
build altars to the sacred new.
As you remember you are a
Daughter of the Cosmic Mother.
Daughter of the As Above, So Below
who aspires to the heights and
plunges the depths as She
walks between the worlds.
So scream like the Banshee
and keen over the bones.
Light the fires of ritual
and offer prayers to the
Ancient and Future ones.
Though the world may change and
perhaps not in the way you desire,
while grief and trauma shift and morph,
you will survive and even prosper
IF you remember who you are
and the power you hold.
Remember…
She who is the Great Mother Goddess,
Warrioress and Ancestor and more.
She who is the Ancient Bone Woman.
She who is the Ancient Deer Mother,
the Memory Keeper, along with
She who is yet to be re-born.
Remember…
She who will always hold and inform you.
Remember…
You are your own Way-Shower and need
only look for the Place of the Next Light.
Remember.
Remember.
Remember.
Place of the Next Light, Arlene Bailey ©2025
(Meet Mago Contributor) Arlene Bailey – Return to Mago E*Magazine
“Rest so you are able to still build
altars to new possibilities and
keen over the bones of what is lost.
Rest until that time you can
give voice to the both/and.” – I particularly like these words because they speak to how important it is to seek ‘both and’ even now… there is light – even if one can’t feel it – I am in that space now at the end of our year, caught in fear and uncertainty and refusing to deny it while KEEPING that door open to the other side of dark. I turn towards my beloved little companion to feel joy…so it’s there but what a year this has been.