Happy Lughnasa

Celebrating the impending harvest time with a prose poem and a prompt

When my therapist asks what I would do if I could do anything, I reply

I would walk in the wild air, amid the chest-high bracken at Lughnasa, halfway between solstice and equinox, the ghost of Lugh’s foster-mother Tailtiu with me, exhausted after clearing the plains for new growth, goddess of the dying crops that fed us all. I have been clearing my own fields and now must walk to find my own nourishment, sun on my face or rain dripping off the brim of my hat, or wind whispering which way to go next.

I would crunch over frost-crusted puddles and shallow pools on the moor at Samhain, the harvest over, the darkness descending, hand-in-hand with the Morrigan, goddess of the dead, protectress against external forces, shapeshifter. Together, we would walk over bracken roots huddled underground, over all that has died within me to allow for new growth, our footfalls making their way around bare-grey branches of heather gnarled like old women’s arthritic fingers, pointing at the past, signaling the secrets seeping through centuries of story, passed mouth to ear, buried in our bones, the Truth of our Selves.

I would walk and walk as the snowdrops huddle in their Imbolc celebrations, gathered in their groups at the bases of oak and chestnut, along the borders, amid the fields, heads gently nodding, as though to affirm a message from Brigid, goddess of healers, of poets, of inspiration and life, saying: Yes! Though the winter has been long and dark, you are still here, still alive. Yes! Though there is yet cold to come, you are nearly there. Go on!

I would walk at Beltane, walk back into the time of my own arrival, daffodil bright and rainswept, and this time, this time I would wrap arms around myself, whisper, ‘welcome, my darling’. I would lie myself down in the fresh spring grass amid buttercups and daisies. What was it we did as children? Plucked one white petal (he loves me) and then another (he loves me not) until all that remained were the skinny stalk and the bald eye of the daisy, petals scattered, having issued their proclamation of love or lack.

All those years of plucking at myself to try to earn love, when all I needed was to walk across the hills and moors, to listen to the whisper of earth and sky, to lie down in this meadow, allow the earth to hold me, fully supported, to be still enough to hear what she has been whispering all along: you are welcome, you are worthy, you belong.

In other words: she loves me

What would you do if you could do anything? What would help you feel your birthright of welcoming, worth, and belonging?