MIST OF AVALON

MIST OF AVALON

The sun set on my life a year since

My soul was sent spinning to the otherworld,

Now I sit under the moon and wait

Wait for my love to join me,

I am in Avalon,

The playground of the dead.

The mist swirls over the calm water

Of the dividing sea,

When the mist touches the shore

In it’s enveloping embrace

I enter its cloaking realm,

And with fellow spirits

I travel the water to see

The living world….

My Kernow.

The Gods allow the dead to roam

In return for peace in their realm,

So I can see my Faelleann

Wife, lover, mother and widow

To a warrior of Britain,

I have walked near the shores edge

The living, they see the wraiths in the mist

Fearful they hide in their little houses,

Dogs bark as I stare with frozen eyes

My wife stands alone.

Her hair full and blazing red

Like the furnaces of Cruachans cave,

Lights up the sky and beguiles me still

The lips, the sweet curves of her body

Impale my spectral heart; she is lost to me

Another warrior’s plaything to be,

And I scream in silent anger and despair.

Only the waves hear my cries

The living fear a storm as the mist surges,

My sword and shield waved in pathetic defiance

As strong arms of wind drag me away from her.

The Gods felt my pain

As every night I travelled in the mist,

And told me they would release her other body

As she slept peacefully and unbeknown,

But I wanted her to live, raising my children

To remember me,

 Dirwrwolf, warrior and father.

My entreaties were heard

And I stood, a proud, armour clad spirit

Summoned by Bel in his high hall,

“You are given leave to see your woman,

But you will never return to Avalon”

I fell to my knees and wept,

The Gods I killed for had honoured me.

“You must not touch your woman

If you want her to live,

If you do she dies,

You will remain on Earth, but you will not walk it”

I was confused by these words

Though it mattered not

I was to see my Faelleann in life, again.

I polished my death scarred armour

My cloak dyed the richest red

From the root of the finest Madder,

My sword gleamed in the sunlight

The pommels dragons smiled their deadly smile,

For I was going home to Kernow

And I stood motionless, waiting by the shore.

The mist came, billowing in impatience

Shrouding the rippled glass of the dividing sea,

I stepped into its miasmic soup

Hollow eyes from a world long dead

Ethereal yet threatening,

Followed my journey to flesh

My shadowbody became whole.

I stepped from the mist

A living, breathing man… I turned

The mist of Avalon had gone,

No dog barked, nobody ran from me

A wraith of dread no more.

Bel had given me power

A Godlike energy with each powerful step,

The lush grass of the meadow

The hum of a myriad of bees,

The raucous arguing rooks

All proclaiming my return

Dirwrwolf of Tregiffian was home.

Faelleann appeared, running, her hair trailing free

Her tears of joy as I stood, sword and shield stowed,

Her mighty warrior and husband was back

The children gazed terrified, to them I was ghost,

A phantom, a killer of the living

The wet nurse ushered them back into the hall.

I tried to walk forward toward her

But my feet were heavy, becoming ensnared,

I looked down and my boots were sprouting snakelike

Digging into the earth,

My arms were taken from my control

As outstretched my fingers began to grow.

Twisting and changing colour

Becoming scaly and brown,

My cry of anguish and pain

Held Faelleann at a distance transfixed in horror.

“Do not come any closer my darling Faelleann

For you will die with me….

I returned to say once more

I love you,

My darling I love you.”

My last words were strangled

As the skin on my neck tightened

And turned to bark, gnarled and flaking.

My tears ran as sap

“NO!!”

The agonized scream wrenched from the trunk

As Faelleann in her dread and despair

Leapt into my harsh, wooden embrace

And sobbing, wrapped her self around me

Saying

“We will never part again my love”

Her arms transformed into serpents

A grayish, smooth and wooden serpent

Each squeezing my bark encrusted carcass,

Spiraled and twisted, a deathly embrace,

Our faces, barely movable, touched in a kiss.

We stayed in a kiss of death

A rigor of lovers kissing for the last time,

My eyes crusted and hollowing watched

As leaves sprouted from us both.

We are one, we are immovable love

Our fruit of apples brings love to the world.

So here we stand, held together in a lovers embrace

Together in Sun, wind, snow and rain

Lover’s eternal, in a deathly courtship.

Ages pass and lovers sit beneath my creaking limbs

With hopes and dreams, forever lovers

They know not, that where they shade

Are the remains of Kernows first lovers.

“In death we are united

As in life we held in each others arms

The true meaning of love,

Entwined

Forever”

Phil Hall  June 2013