05. The Sacred Grove

 

The Sacred Grove

To wake and find a stranger on your shore,
a woman too, alone, a makeshift boat
of wicker, hides and tar blown from the north
in winds that howled all night. No fish again
today unless it backs round to the south.

And so she stays, some widow takes her in,
shares what little food she has with her
until she’s strong enough to build a hut,
her coracle a roof, an earth bank wall.
Then slowly people start to come to see

this quiet stranger with a touch that heals
a wound from dogfish spurs, a shattered bone,
a broken heart, down by the singing grove
of oak and willow, ash and elder trees
where rows of bowlies mark the sacred space.

And she begins to learn the language of the town,
comic first, then confident, as good as them,
and tells the story of a god who died,
who came to life again, who lives close by.
Is it here, where women often come

to offer what they can: a moon caught herring,
a loaf of bread for fortune with the catch,
and something living for the bigger gods,
that might avoid catastrophe? Men go too,
with fears of slowly drowning far from land.

And then this stranger’s stories, strange themselves,
against the grain, somehow familiar.
So does this god who died walk in our grove?
Does he see us, and can he see our slow
starvation at this bitter winter’s hand?

It had become her way to meet with women
early, in that holy place of holly hedges,
tangled blackthorn green with ivy leaves,
every morning at the dawn of day,
before the boats went out and women

gathered in the margins of the tides.
Show us this man, this god. And then would say,
At least show us its likeness with its power.
And so that morning when they asked again,
she pointed east, the sun just coming up

above the land, and at its path of light
upon the sea and everybody felt
its warmth at once. Like that, she said and stopped.
No, not like that. That, but here. She pointed
and they looked at where she said to look, and saw.