Alder Elder – Isle of Ancestors

 

Always the ferry women are silent,

and that is as it is meant to be,

on these journeys over, and across,

to the Isle of Ancestors.

Always a mystery, never

knowing who might appear,

and so, there was the usual surprise.

An Alder tree appeared to me,

one that has always caused a puzzle.

The Alder pollenates and sheds

freely, its bounty of cones and seeds.

Possibly this meeting will resound.

Change views, and reassess.

This Alder is my Elder, a distant

ancestor of no name. There is

no fear associated with this meeting,

only a vague sense of human guilt

and wrong sight. Possibly this tree

ancestor echoes a real one, one gifted

with the abundance of nature, whose

beat was curtailed, unfairly.

My cloak securely around me,

while making an offering of an image,

to post in its honour, was finally done,

laid at the earthy root

of this great tree, and ancestor.

Accepting the abundance of such a one,

and understanding it for the first time,

the fuzziness of mind shifting with

the gliding pollens of earliest spring. They

are no more nuisance.

The misunderstanding

is the thing that might be gotten rid of…

 

(copyright Imogen Crest 2006.)