How to Dance Naked in the Moonlight
Celtic Pagan and Skeptic Confront the Ceremony
By Katherine L. Gordon and Lenny Everson
rev 1
Copyright Katherine L. Gordon and Lenny Everson 2011
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****
Contents
Fairly Factual
Forward
Preparation
A Priestess Prepares
Snakes and Ladders:
The Truth about the Moon
Return to the Source Vision 1
Three
Masks
Faerie-Moon Wolf-Moon: Vision 2
Stone and chalice: Earth,
Air, Fire, Water
In Moonlight The Sky Will Slide
The
Quarry
Where Bones Dissolve
Finding Myself in the Night
I
Also Find Myself in the Night
Night Wind
Ancient Cartography
Of
a Man With No Map to Leave
The Disconnect of Days
Madness in
the Moonlight
Care of the Elderly Moon-Mad
You are part of the
tumble
Moon-Blest Wishes
Moonlight Wish
Dancers Never Die
The Poets
****
Fairly Factual Foreword
By Katherine L. Gordon
This is a book of maybes. Maybe it contains the key to traveling to a magical and powerful sphere as practiced for millennia by Celtic priestesses. Maybe it is just a cheeky romp in the moonlight by bare-assed bad boys. Maybe it contains the recipe for the exhilaration of stepping out of boundaries into the only freedom we have left: the unadorned experience of self in the lonely moon-lit night.
Maybe it will help you see aspects of the brief human journey in ways that will change and transform you.
If these verses make you wonder, smile, tearily respond, long to explore the un-mapped terrain that pulls your blood as the moon does the tides, then the skeptic and the pagan have reaped the moon - and are satisfied.
****
Preparation
If t’were done when ‘tis done
then I’d best give you now
A list of ways to prepare
You’ll
be mooning the moon in the deep of the night
And it can get pretty
chilly out there
You’ll want clothes that come off
with the tug of a string
And slippers to put on your feet
A
path you can take if someone summons the cops
And you need to make
a retreat
Inside your house you can clear from
your mind
Things that’ll get in the way
Yesterday’s sorrows
and all your tomorrows
And whatever has happened this day
Your fear of the night, that girl
and her slight
That she laid on you back in grade three
Worldly
news and those six-o’clock blues
People you’d like to ‘set
free’
Now the light of the moon’s the
light of the sun
And the combo’s quite an effect
But before
you get too excited inside
You should know what not to expect
There’ll be no church choirs or
warm comfy fires
The keep the dew off your knees
And deep in
the winter you should be quite the sprinter
Before certain parts
start to freeze
This won’t pay down your taxes or
send off your faxes
You can’t get a tan from the moon
And
that ghostly guide you’ll meet there outside
Is probably just a
raccoon.
Well, I could be wrong (I haven’t
done this long)
Chocolates might fall from the sky
But those
golden beams are just perfect for dreams
So I’m not sure one
should ever ask “why”
And it might cure your warts (if
they’re the right sorts)
It might get your spirit to soar
So
wait for the night and hold your doubts tight
And bravely open
that door.
****
A Priestess Prepares
Night approaches,
excitement
mounts:
light has possessed me before.
I leave hearth and duty
silver-slippered and cloaked
stand alone in a circle of
stones
bringing ONE question
to
petition all powers
the answer will come before dawn.
Step into lit circle of moon-laser
shimmering power particles
from earth stone and sky
unfasten the cloak, bathe in light,
soon your body will merge,
magnetic pulses converge
you have fasted and focused
be
ready to dance
with the partner who first takes your hands
you will sight other bodies of night
dervish-twirling around each stone
nothing is solid, you
might disappear
be prepared to simply let go.
****
Snakes and Ladders: The Truth about the Moon
As you go out to get coyote-drunk in
the moonlight, maybe even moth-dazed silly in the moonlight, let me
tell you a few things about that bastard cold and airless chunk of
space flotsam.
I will tell you, because they told me. But you may
not want to know. That’s your business.
Birth
There was a time when two worlds
collided at an unmarked intersection and married in haste.
There
was no insurance. There may have been passion, for after the
throbbing and the pulsing and heat of that quickie rendezvous they
became the planet beneath your trimmed toenails. Home to the dew
worms who are wondering who’s standing on their doorstep.
The
moon was born that evening. It has rolled through Earth’s heavens
ever since, its acne scars recording the hits it’s taken. Some were
bullets meant for us, so give it a medal.
Its legitimacy, as I
said, is still in question, so read on.
Rolling Around Heaven All Day
It moves away like the uncertain
bastard child it is; it was closer in the bellowing brontosaur days.
But it drags on the earth, unwilling yet to skip off to Arcturus.
The
oceans of Earth rise and follow behind it, like the swell of breasts
in the deep cedar forests when the brassiere is removed by love. Or
whatever.
But it’s not just salt-green seawater trailing; the
whole freakin’ earth’s skin reaches for love; the whole earth
dances to the pull. The very continents crack as the moon goes by
smiling, grinning, laughing.
It walks, and sets the continents
adrift; now volcanoes heaves themselves moonward like basket snakes
in some far east bazaar. Bellowing smoke, they must worship. In that
act, in that moonlight dance, they create and destroy. And create and
destroy.
The volcanoes stewed us , chewed us, and screwed us so
often, roiled and boiled the planet, turned amoebas into elephants
and hauled the trilobites off to the gas chambers, destroying life a
hundred times and the very beds of the oceans are littered with the
bones and shells the howling volcanoes made and killed.
Laddering
Radiation coughs itself up and
parents find themselves with strange children. The ladders of DNA are
shattered and repaired and shattered again. And life ladders itself
up rung by rung from algae to Albertosaurus to Albert (who lives just
down my street and drinks only Bulgarian wines).
No moon, and the
world would be a stew of algae. Without the moon, the earth might
never have know your heartbeat and longing and the way your bare skin
feels the chilly winds of midnight.
Touch the green grass of home.
You can thank the moon for it.
Snaking
It’s not all worship, you know, of
this inconstant Moon. Those mountains of fire that wake to its call
sometimes have poisoned breath. Diana’s kitchen erupts into
smoke.
You didn’t know that? How many times have these
moon-follower mountains rolled a quilt over this planet and snaked
life on earth almost back to square one? A quilt such as might be
dreamed of by Satan’s last quilting bee. Years of darkness and
rivers and oceans of dead and nothing for the winds to gather except
dust. When the skies finally clear, years later, life plays a new
game with the survivors. A new game every time.
Does it scare you?
It should.
And Yet….
We are small beneath the stars; we
are a triumph of moonpull and luck. We are the most transitory part
of the universe, like a single chord on an old guitar in a single
song.
One moon to make us.
One moon to break us.
Yet you are
living. You have defied the odds and the dead, dead universe to be
here. You are part of the fire and the warmth. You share with the
trees and the grass and the sleeping squirrel and the earthworms
beneath your feet a history of beating the moon at is mad-dog
games.
Worship all you want. Part of me knows I am out here
dancing naked to thank the moon.
Part of me know I am here to
defy the moon.
****
Return to the Source Vision 1
Standing bare in moonlight
recovering pre-birth time
before collision of moon and sun
surprised some womb,
scattering once more into star-dust
not
wanting a body,
blending into electric ecstasy
with a dynamic
universe
where anything can be momently created
from a
hologram of god,
free from circumscribed circle
of our
sentence here,
drifting to other planets, other suns,
a
million moons,
all reflecting fire-flickerings
of manifested
life.
We never depart, only transform
to other fields of
energy.
In moon-vision I see clearly my many forms:
bird
butterfly woman-spirit, animal and tree
lit by the same
fire-force.
The planet changes,
our essence appears near
other suns
until the hologram pieces
rejoin to implode.
****
Three Masks
Remove the mask you wear for
strangers -
The disguise you strap on
To allay their fears
In
shopping mall
And video store.
Your keep it firmly in
place
Even if only to be sure those people stay
Well outside.
Peel off the mask your wear for
friends -
The wry smile, the good silences
The mask they helped
you paint
Because you did the same for them.
A thinner cloth
that lets
Enough truth come through.
But not too much.
And
never all.
Claw off that mask you wear for
you
Even in the shower
Even in those insomniac hours
Even
walking hospital corridors.
It’ll come off -
The clasps are
rusty
And it’s close to the skin
So it’ll stick a bit.
Pull
harder, if you must.
Tilt back to the moonlight
More
naked than offing clothes
Could ever do
****
Faerie-Moon Wolf-Moon: Vision 2
At last a faerie foot-fall in
circle's centre:
my true kin.
No one on the flat plain of day
can ever really know me as I am,
here stretched in dimensions
of light,
the thorn and velvet of his skin
abrasing every
pore of mine.
Mortal make-believe of action and outcome
becomes
black comedy
in unrelenting moon-glare.
He whispers of the
wolf who eats the moon -
our end-of-days to follow the last
jagged mouthful,
our life a strobe-flash in a dancer's
moon-temple.
Faeries endure as the world breaks and re-forms,
the life force he carries animates the dead.
I inhale him
greedily, every atom recharged
with his white essence
the
power given to continue, to dance and to quest,
to vision past
Earth, future planet,
when moonlight has scoured the bowl of
fools
all pretence banished.
****
Stone and chalice: Earth, Air, Fire, Water
If you feel you need a
protocol
(Some do, some don’t; it varies with the mind)
You
may add one step, this simple ritual
Of calling up the elements
of Earth
Take a chalice, made of glass and
colored blue
(A wine glass from the dollar store is fine:
Anything
will do, for moonlight has no price)
But Luna answers best to blue
they say.
Now fill it half with water from
some creek
Or puddle, or other rain-born source.
Then find a
stone you like, small enough
To hold and fair enough to make you
smile
If you have a choice, then granite’s
likely best
Or limestone - rocks these share the tides of
moon.
Because the water’s ocean and your rock’s the Earth
And
hold them up, raise them to the light
And while you live, you are air and
fire
You burn as embers every time you breathe.
Defy the moon,
or worship, as you wish:
You have made your presence known to the
moon.
****
In Moonlight The Sky Will Slide
The knife must be moon-blest
and
made of stone,
iron grounds high magic.
When the moon betrays a hiding place
the sky slides - parts
between the auraed trees.
I step into the wind-wracked rent
beyond the stones,
shaping a space with my flint blade.
This dimension is a circle dance
lit by star fires,
bodies as light as thistle-silk
pirits
chameleon flames
in magnetic colours
I am a link in the spiral chain
of
creation
earth life a petty penance
before the emergence of
wings.
Here is a belonging,
fields of
blue and silver flowers,
if I drink the misty wine, eat of the
feast-fruit,
I may not return.
This night I trade promises
for
an answer to the burning query,
return at first light
with
enough to sustain,
eyes like mountain people
who
have seen the grail
in caves on cloud-secreted peaks.
****
The Quarry
Soft and wide in the moonlight
my
nets go out
wet, cold
like spiderwebs
Hung from limb
tied to
tree
staked deep and looped round
solid granite rock
they
cover the time
where tomorrow meets today
In this night
of angel
flights
the quarry comes
to seek the golden
moonbright husk
And nights and sights
and little
toy trains
years and fears
forgotten pains…
All are woven
into
my finest mesh
It happens quite often like this
After the escape, the net
must be
woven again
finer yet
Last month I remembered the taste
of
wild raspberries
when I was twelve.
So this has been added
to
tighten the mesh.
In the lunar light
with nets
drawn tight
patiently
I wait for me.
****
Where Bones Dissolve
Dance naked in moon-light
to
reveal who you are
no ego, no identity
in reflected light,
your bones a collection
of ancestral star-dust.
Who inhabits them -
wild as
night thickets,
brother of oak, sister of hawthorn,
atavistic
wolf, shadow-hunter,
the owl who understands death.
What you are is beyond bones
your
power waxes and wanes
filling its own circle
ever returning,
memories span the centuries,
blood and wine bonding
soul-bridge
all the lures that fasten life
lose
lustre when we see where spirit goes
white light the purest path
no pain can follow.
Open the net, swim willingly
into the
seething silver sea
of all that is about-to-be.
****
Finding Myself in the Night
I am the wild pig
Skulking among
lilacs
Rooting in the memories
I thought I’d forgotten
I am the angel of the
Strange
heart
Sitting in moonlight
Covering myself with yellow leaves
I am Adam's son in high leather
boots
Waltzing alone
Under that big yellow eye
Wondering if
anyone will ever
Speak my true name
Aieee! Aieee! Aieee!
I am that I
am!
It will take me days, perhaps
weeks
Just to haul all the costumes
Down to the Sally Ann.
****
I Also Find Myself in the Night
I am the unfinished symphony
sour-noting the famished spring
I am fallen stars cindering
black trees in winter
I lurk in burnt barbeques
black
ovens
fallen cakes
nudging the hopeless
over the thin red
edge of sanity
all the moon-struck fools with frost-bite
think
they have seen my demon face
you will smell me in their hasty
cast-offs
at the Sally Ann
Beware all omens-- lock out the
moon.
****
Night Wind
Life is movement, and
it is
wind
that makes the
night world dance
Grass loves wind
and
will
forever.
The dark trees
call it friend
and I
too
Now is the sound of the world
Mine;
I have leaned back
Washed in moonlight
and finally
I
have
caught the wind.
****
Ancient Cartography
Let's tell them stories
of air
and of light
embrace soft as down
love that lasts,
no
rush
just the hush
of night,
with silver shadows on the
path.
Dreams spun of cob-webs and
corn-silk
to fold unseen in your hand,
held tight through the
bruises of day
tucked in mind-pockets to stay.
Bring this much back
from
moonlit track,
wind whispers time in your ear,
put the dreams
in a book
where night travelers can look,
the least you can
leave
is a map.
****
Of a Man With No Map to Leave
The midnight field is full
of old
hickories
dry milkweed, mice,
and future factories
The sky is full
of cold air
small
clouds and
moonlight promises.
He is what you call
an educated
man.
He has a car, and so
respects the need
for wide roads
and
fewer mice.
And the sky, the field
the weeds,
the road
the moon, and this man,
they form
a circle,
almost.
But he cannot quite
close the
ends -
not with words
or mice
or
even golden
light.
Not even with the
golden light.
****
The Disconnect of Days
Under halogen lights
in cement
towers
a hundred offices chatter
minds in life-on-hold mode
to settle the world's concerns,
smug with the satisfaction
of another fat file filled.
Driving home we can lose our way
stop in at a cafe to check the map,
in the parking lot a city
sparrow begs
a raggedy kid asks for a loonie,
dead eyes
averted.
The coming darkness gentles
littered curb sharps,
a
glimmer of moon, first star,
maybe Venus if one could remember
or it mattered.
A breath of something stirring under leaves
penetrates the paper-focused mind -
suddenly all the
disconnected
heaps of paper-work
become virtual toy
aeroplanes,
shapes to hurl into hollows
seek out any woods
that may be left,
find fields where wildflowers weep,
cagy
coons forage, deer diminish.
The grief of no-map-to-the-wild
becomes the paper-weight
of your last
nuclear-lit days.
****
Madness in the Moonlight
Listen to me, she said
There is
madness in moonlight
If you prepare to pass through
There
is not just magic
In moonlight
There are ghosts.
Wild men and poets
Can die in
that light,
If they learn that
Silver dreams and shadows
Is
all they are.
We send them to rest
in dark
places,
Lay secrets among them.
Scratch epithets
on damp
walls.
Tell no one!
I can assure you of this, she
said
Looking around
I’ve seen it happen.
I had no answer
In that daylight,
but
I thought maybe I’d
Cut back on my moon-dancing
A
bit.
****
Care of the Elderly Moon-Mad
Don't let grannie
see that moon
to-night!
It's much too full and bright!
Lock the door
pull
the blinds
early bed and hush!
If she gets out
she'll
throw away her cane
do that dance again--
the neighbors will
complain.
She'll come back demanding
sugar in her tea!
She'll start telling those stories
many times over,
won't
keep quiet for weeks.
Her days in the sun are done,
her use
is really over,
no time of life to be a moon-rover!
She says
she sees her friends
in some great fairy ride
they wave to
her and say they'll wait.
And then for weeks she keeps
that
damned moonlight
in her eyes.
****
You are part of the tumble
The others
Huddle in houses,
cower in clothes
Not knowing of moonlight and dew on the
rose
Peeking through curtains they see only the dark
Turning
backs to the facts: they’re riding an ark
So their life’s not
a fire, it’s only a spark
Amid rivers of eons, lost chances and
rhyme,
And the eye of that lizard, old father time.
But you
Are part of the tumble,
the rumble, and Mars
Of galaxies turning and hydrogen burning in
the hearts of the stars
And the slow swing of moon from midnight
to noon
While treetops catch light from drunks in their cars
The
western horizon is lifting itself to the skies
The eastern is
sinking to balance that rise
Your yesterdays gone to their
thousand good-byes.
So you can
Stand like a saint,
throw your arms wide,
Laugh if you must - it’s a heluva ride -
On a little blue ball in unending space
Earth and her moon and
infinite grace
Years in their billions and stars in their
trillions
Dancing around in gravity’s embrace.
Naked as dark and open to
night
Celebrate your life in the pale golden light.
****
Moon-Blest Wishes
We close the magic circle,
gifts
from the moon in our hearts,
may we carry some mystery into day.
We lost ourselves in grass and wood,
earth alive beneath bare
feet,
made a connection
to all that really matters.
May the light of the moon
reflected
through us,
shine on all those we might meet,
so that shared
light in time
will illuminate
all of the darkness here.
****
Moonlight Wish
May you travel bravely,
With
moonlight in your heart;
Dancing in the moonlight
Has set your
soul apart.
May you learn to listen
To the
wood-smoke in the fall.
May you see a raindrop
In a summer
squall.
May you learn to touch
The riding
of a bike
And share the grace of cookies
With people that you
like.
May your crayons color
Church-bells
in the dawn.
May all your poems be wrapped as gifts
And sent
from Avalon.
May you travel bravely,
With
moonlight in your heart;
Dancing in the moonlight
Has set your
soul apart.
****
Dancers Never Die
The dance is never ended,
fireflies
still will flit
from branch to cloud's dark edges,
moon-maidens
still shyly step
into the arms of faerie.
We are born to seek
out how and why
through many lives until we learn,
the
deja-vu of kaleidoscope moments
reveals the prism of moon-struck
beings.
The orb that faithfully follows
earth's blooming and decay,
holds all the heart-beats of our
kind,
pours them into tides and pulls us away.
Alone in her
light we are never lonely,
the beam extends from cave to
space-module.
In this dance we are always alive.
****
The Poets
Katherine L. Gordon lives to write in a secluded river valley, where she is free to dance unseen in a midnight moon-lit stone circle, following her Celtic Pagan traditions.
In day-light she is an author, editor, publisher, judge and reviewer, occasionally a prize-winning poet. Katherine is the National Coordinator for the Canadian Poetry Association.
Katherine wrote:
A Priestess Prepares
Return to
the Source Vision 1
Faerie-Moon Wolf-Moon: Vision 2
In
Moonlight The Sky Will Slide
Where Bones Dissolve
I Also Find
Myself in the Night
Ancient Cartography
The Disconnect of
Days
Care of the Elderly Moon-Mad
Moon-Blest Wishes
Dancers
Never Die
Lenny Everson is a country boy currently living in the city. As a result he can be found on some moonlit nights running through the suburbs, pursued by the local Esthetics Police.
He has been known to call himself a poet, novelist, screenwriter, journalist, playwright, illustrator, and publisher.
Lenny Wrote:
Preparation
Snakes and Ladders:
The Truth about the Moon
Three Masks
Stone and chalice: Earth,
Air, Fire, Water
The Quarry
Finding Myself in the Night
Night
Wind
Of a Man With No Map to Leave
Madness in the Moonlight
You
are part of the tumble
Moonlight Wish
**** END ****