Song of the Ancestors

for Elder Malidome Some

Tonight the ancestors circle close—

and candles flicker between worlds

where souls pass to and fro. 

I have heard them coming and going –

murmuring prayers, humming songs

that come from the center of the earth. 

*

There are those who tend the portals

through time. There are those who dwell

in the canyons, caves, and lakes who sing

the whole world into being 

again and again.

There are those who hold the drumbeat

through the rise and fall of empire

and sit at the loom at the center 

of the universe to weave the next story.

Tonight the ancestors circle close—

and we who have forgotten how

to tend the holy are being asked to remember.

To clear the patterns that have twisted 

the essence of our lineage.

To make amends.

To bring honey and balm to the places

in ourselves that have carried

wounds and atrocities. 

To call down the blessings of the line

that reimagines itself through our living. 

Some say all the pains of the world,

all the great imbalances of our time

come from the restlessness 

of the unrecognized ancestors.

And some say that all the beauty

of the world comes from the visions

of the descendants, calling us forth.

For we too will pass in and out

of bodies—through the hallways of time.

We will be called upon by our grandchildren’s

grandchildren—to light the way a while

with the lantern the size of the moon.

We will be asked about the magic of old—

that most ordinary magic

of seasons and light and seeds.

Tonight, the ancestors circle close –

and our hearth fires speak in their tongue.

Lay the table with marigold and pomegranate,

with scarlet leaves and gourds. For together

we are already dreaming the next year’s arc.

Together, we are already dreaming 

the story to come. 

©Laura Weaver

LauraWeaver.org

Harvest

Standing in a trembling grove of aspen,

tasting the fire in their release—

I see all the moments of my journey

as shimmering leaves

on the Tree of Life.

And I see how all of these moments—

even the ones I have prayed

could stay—will turn to gold,

speak their story, and fall

back into this black earth.

How I never could have never imagined

this face of mine after five decades—

the unique shape of this life of mine,

the particular harvest baskets I carry

full of the seeded grasses of childhood,

the plums of love, the late summer

blackberries of longing, the boughs

of young elderhood that beckon to me now.

We are travelers through a life

that re-writes itself again and again,

season after season, so we become

unrecognizable even to ourselves.

And as time passes, we become

more intimate with all that is transitory—

resting in to the unknowable,

all the urgent questions falling away,

become chaff for the next growing season.

So now there is this quiet bliss that arises

from this particular quality of light—

the scent of these leaves, the silver crescent

of moon in violet sky, the imprint

of all we love, of all that loves us.

As evening comes, starlings murmurate –

spectacular oracles speaking

in the language of wings and wind—

and I feel the autumn weaving

its magic again on the loom of my being

for another round of seasons—

And this blessed weight

of my harvest baskets

filling and emptying

and filling once again.