Hinterland
Looking out, over the edge
Puzzling at the curious, cinnabar, sky
Twilight at dawn, wrong, wrong
Topsy-turvy, like a sated bat
dangling over a bloodless sea
Arms folded against the nip
Too much of everything,
wine, song, creativity, too much
We had made ourselves attractive
Out of place here, sentinels at a silent gate
We had summoned something to feed
in this otherworld, this hinterland,
this border of perception
Peering through the silk screen
at another dimension, a different print
“What, on earth, is that”, pointing.
On the roof, a cat
Feral, snarlsome, blood-red maw
Crouched ready to pounce. Muscle-bristled
under ratty, white fur. Knowing
It’s ‘Ginny Gould’ country this, wary.
Protected dwellings and arcane superstition
We should have stayed in the cottage
Things are drawn to power and there
is… Power here. No doubt about that
The whole place is rooted in bone
The calcium of ages, race memory of evolutions
It’s a tundra of extinct species
Fossil-fed heartland
Oh yes! There is power.
This makes the sensitive anxious
We know this place, this crossing point, sense it
feel it, sucking at the sinew of wills
We step inside the ‘cottage on the chalk’
Feline protection offered and accepted
Then later, back in our own world
The world of porcelain eave-cats,
Familiar guardians of folk-lore
Back, where sunrises and roof ornaments
are exactly how they should be, we rest
© 2005 Kahdoosch
posted by Kahdoosch at 10:50 PM
4 Comments:
The cottage in the picture is where this event took place. If you look on the roof, to the right of, and just below, the chimney you can just make out a white 'blob'. This is the porcelain cat which hides it's more combatative personality in the hinterworld.
The cottage is called 'Seafields', it's sits on the coast of the Dorset chalk downs. The beaches in the area are strewn with fossils (almost like they have been dumped by some fossil making factory :-)). The view of the cottage garden takes in Ringstead Bay. Weymouth to the right and, to the left, a small islet. Local legend has it that the witch, 'Ginny Gould' (Ginny Greenteeth) lived in a small cottage on this Islet.
Builders still find the corpses of cats plastered into nooks in the walls in this area (the locals believed it kept Ginny at bay). In modern times the roof ornaments are deemed to suffice.
The event described in this poem occured, first weekend in November 2000 (yep, around Samhain).
There are more things under the sky... etc.
Oh, another thing, when I got back from this trip, my father had left a book for me in my kitchen. A Terry Pratchett book called 'The Wee Free Men' (very good book IMO). It's about a witch who lives on the chalk, who battles Ginny Greenteeth with an iron skillet and who has a white cat which ends up confined to the roof. Portents indeed.
OOOOOOOOO I love this house. What a beautiful picture. So serene.
I love that cat idea. So cool!!!
Strange thing about this Shy is that the 'cat thing' isn't an idea. It actually happened. About 3 other people can verify it as well. Very weird experience, but only one of a few. My friends and I seem to attract the preternatural like magnets (hardly surprising though since most of my mates practise some form of mysticism).
We had a fantastic weekend there,though, my daughter was talking(She was only 2 at the time) about 'people coming out of the walls' for weeks afterwards.
Actually, I got the year wrong. It was November 2003 not 2000 (she wasn't born in Nov 2000, which would have been supernatural indeed had she helped me collect fossils on the beach).
The cottage is great but, like all places that exist on the borders of realities, it had a very pagan feel. The type of place where deity is a two edged sword i.e. good and evil aren't opposites they are judgeless instincts.
I've stood on these edges a few times (in various locations. I'm not without protective talents myself so have never felt in danger.
Hence the lines from 'predators and dead animals':
String them on a stout wide belt
chastity of warding.
i.e. A warding Talisman showing power by ergi symbolically linked to sexual fasting ( 'don't Phuck with me', kind of thing). I've had my run in's with the morrigan, told her to kiss my sweet derriere (astral travelers call her the 'hag archetype'). Still, have to keep Leah protected for long enough to kick ass on her own accord.
Oh my that is amazing. I believe you. I have had some pretty strange things happen in my joruney as well. My daughter seems to be more into this than I am. She is a funny one. Very very open to all things.
Nice story. And you have a daughter. I bet you are a wonderful father. Keeping her in much laughter.
(smile)
Post a Comment
<< Home