My Poetry Journal

There’s a lot of change in the air on this side of the monitor. Some of it fairly good, some of it – well, a little uncertain. Most of you know that I am an adjunct faculty member at the college, so my job is always a shaky prospect from semester to semester. But that’s not the kind of change I am speaking of – though it certainly adds to a little of that shaky feeling.

As I noted a few posts back, a poem I entered into a Literature contest at the college won first place, as well as the Award for Literary Excellence for the poetry category. That was the first moment that I can put my finger on – the moment where things started to change. That realization, that I had reached another small crossroads in my Spiritual Life – one that could easily change a lot about who I am. I mean, shit folks I’m nearly 50 years old. I thought that Life would have me on a fairly firm Path at this point – a job that I was working towards some kind of retirement, and a fairly set Life in a lot of other regards. Instead, I find myself at a crossroads in my Life when it comes to my professional career. And then I get hit by a potential change in my Spiritual Life.

Its fairly obvious to me that I am a Solitaire by my nature. I handle ritual and celebration much better as a solo practitioner than I ever did as a group member. There’s no eventual expectation on me to hive out of my group and create a new one. I’m a group of me – there’s not a whole lot of expectation of hiving off. But there is the expectation of constant learning, constant evolving. When I first set foot on a solo path, I utilized the strains of Wicca I had been taught during my early time on my Path, when I was in a group. Some of the ritual I changed to fit my needs and whims, some of it I kept since I felt comfortable with it. But over time, I felt the push to move on to another Path. I really didn’t know what that would be, until I stumbled onto the Path of Druidry through the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD). The framework is something that I have enjoyed utilizing, and is definitely the right structure that I needed.

I decided early on to utilize the Native American Path as the thread I would work through the framework, and found myself adopted by first Crow, and then Coyote. Crow was more of a messenger, constantly leaving me items in my meditations and dreams – little puzzle pieces I had to work with. Coyote is different. We are kindred spirits. Through Coyote, I have learned to not take myself so seriously – to see mirth in every aspect of Life. And it will continue to be an ongoing lesson throughout my time on the Wheel. Crow, on the other hand, has started pointing me in a different way. This started with the poem and the contest.

As I have said before, I do not take my poetry all that seriously – its an emotional outlet for me. Entering that poem into the contest was done under some major cajoling from friends and family. And its a weird moment – because in the rest of my Life, I take myself far too seriously, and yet here with my creative writing side, I was not taking myself seriously at all. That has started to change. Crow has had some moments of moving me towards other areas of inspiration within the Gods and Goddesses. I had figured it would be the more familiar Greek or Roman thematic that would be the stronger pull for me, but that proved not to be the case. Somehow, I find myself drawn towards Taliesin and Lugh – the Celts.

My ancestry is mostly Germanic and western European, so I would guess that it makes some sense. I am still a little muddled on all of that. I have never identified with the Celtic aspect all that much, so some of this makes no sense to me. Taleisin, of whom I have been studying quite a bit through my OBOD lessons, seemed a natural fit. The Bardic strain runs deep within there. But Lugh, is a bit of a mystery to me. And one I will have to start doing some research on.

Yes, I find myself on a Bardic Path. Not just as a grade of learning within OBOD, but in how I present myself to the world. I am already spending major amounts of time writing – just automatic writing, anything that comes into my head – and than seeing if there is anything there that I can work with later on. I am looking at my older poetry, and trying to see if there are ways that I can improve some of the wording there. I am already looking into mythic stories that I can attempt to learn for recitation. Nine Hells, I already do this in the classroom – my lecture style is very informal, and interlaced with story-telling of good and bad times within my career. I am not at all sure how I got here – how my feet have led me to stand high on this mountain I now find myself…but I am here. All I can do is embrace what is in front of me…and feel those rays of sunshine on my face, and that fire deep inside…  I know that my Path will not be a purely Celtic one – I am not here for reconstruction, I am here for inspiration – I am here to find the salmon…