So- this year I composed another poem that I felt  somehow would go with the above…..(or below?)  in that it sort of rhymes- well- more like  assonance than proper rhyme, and I tried to keep roughly a certain number of syllables per line. I have friends who love to do all those formal structured kinds of poems but this is about as close as I can get. I can only write words that I can feel in my body, and that doesn’t quite lend itself to an external structure.  (Actually- I remember at the time of writing this that I was calling it an homage to Yeats.)

Gwenhwyfar

I went and found a magic sword

And cast it in the water.

A Lady rose and came to me,

She sang and called me daughter.

I walk the world and still I feel

Her hand upon my brow.

The gift she gave of truthful speech

Is with me ever now.

I found a King on wounded bed,

His pain a blight upon his Land.

They took his blood and poured it out

A piercing lance in their fair hands.

They ringed him round and held him there

And praised his hoary crownéd head.

But shadows walked in his fair realm

Because his soul was dead.

I placed him on a floating craft.

It floated on the mere.

The darkest depths his line did plumb,

His hand trembling with fear.

But piece by piece his armour rose,

Fished from the glimmering waves.

Washed in tears, they made him whole,

And man and realm were saved.

Two loves I had, they loved me truly,

Both lay upon my breast.

Their flesh was made of this green land,

Golden East and dark-haired West.

They fought their foes with strength and wit,

But called each other friend.

My curly, deep-eyed mountain man,

And corn boy from the glen.

I walk a path with my darkling child,

With eyes so fae and strange.

But I see a star upon his brow,

He never will be tame.

And as he walks he leaves a trail

Of singing tones and words,

Of growing shoots and hovering bees

And winging flight of bird.

 ©Cath Blackfeather