I don’t know when winter became my home, nor when the sun first failed to renew,
when the owl cast its shadow across my heart,
and the first blossom withered in my hand,
the first child looked away,
and the first crow called my name;
nor when skin, once firm as a grape,
grew raisined, and veins once hidden
began to mark my hands like tributaries,
that guide the ancient power of what I am become outward to the Great Grey Invisible
that weaves what is and will be.
I don’t know when
my words first shaped air into flesh,
when stars first bloomed from my fingers,
and I first bent light into being,
when maiden became most ancient crone,
and fell to the grief of wisdom.

Some nights, there is no sleep;
such times my eyes pierce
the icy curtain that hangs beyond,
and it opens momentarily,
reveals a restless panorama:
visceral dreams recount a maidentime,
when I was new and fair,
each random, rambling love of my libertine life. They float unreachable now,
trapped in the awful and fluorescent light of memory –
this unwanted perusal of what could not be
and never really was –
each hope that unfeathered fell
to lie piteous on the damp and funereal earth.
It went so quickly,
lost in a kaleidoscope of years.
And in lieu of lovers,
I took on power,


wove the world on a charm,
sprung fresh from the root of sorrow.

I don’t know when I grew so old,
how old I really am.
Go into my attic, Father Pádraig –
count the bones
you find sequestered there.
Let them tell my age –
read scribed upon them
a litany of sins.
Mete me no penance, Father: I confess only to myself,
and my tears fall stones
enough to build a cairn.

Then get me to the river before sunrise,
before the first lark sings,
and while the hound lies sleeping.
Let me renew;
let me once more recall
the way my body felt
with morning in it.



Author Notes


*The Cailleach Bhéara is a Goddess of Creation, some say of winter, death, and even a resurrection Goddess. She is most ancient of beings. Stories about her are diverse. My personal favorite says that when she grows very old, if she can make it to the river at dawn, and before she hears a dog bark or a bird sing, she will be made young again. There is a story of a priest – some say St. Patrick – who found her and demanded to know her age. She told him to go to the attic and count the bones he found there, remnants of things she’d eaten over millennia. When he returned from the attic, he found her changed, a young woman in her place. As I grow older, I find there is in all elder women a young woman, still. My reflection always surprises me. And in that sense, I think we all become An Cailleach Bhéara.

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