deepundergroundpoetry.com

Hymn to Druids

�

That Midsummer evening
I crossed Salisbury Plain on foot
�
thousands of people �
bag checks
sniffer dogs
�
they blurred into the background
as I saw them there�
�
the great sarsens, sentry in the Earth
yoked to one another, some toppled
�
I pressed desperate palms against them
and soaked in all I�d imagined
in every documentary
every school book
�
felt those blue stones reverberate
as women in red sang melodies �
harmonising with the sunset
�
and the darkness came �
and I remember music
and chanting�s gentle drone
�
laying beneath stars, clutching
my bag of trinkets, burying half
of a quartz crystal that had broken
clean in two near the heel stone
so I would always feel connected.
�
Candy pink mist rolled my ankles
as light began to lift. How it felt �
to float through cloud like old Gods
in modern times
�
and then they came�
the Druids
�
uttering oaths I knew by heart,
drumming to hail the rising of the sun
and there was celebration on the face
of every human being who had come
to dance with the old ones
to forget the world beyond
to pray their humble prayers. �
�
I think back to that Solstice often,
thinking of how much those Celts
echo in my reckless blood
�
those bards, whose voices
live in my heart, and my soul
and my veins
�
as if that hawk of dawn longed
to build its nest
�
how it broods there gently
in the centre of my chest.
�