RAUHNACHT’S LIED 10

• NOTE: I am observing the Rauhnächte, the 12 days between the Winter Solstice and January 3. This has always been a special time for me, for many reasons. Some of these may become clear to you, dear reader —and perhaps also more clear to me, the writer!— as we travel through these dark days, these beloved dark days… and as I write these short “songs” to this time “between the years.”

• Listening to Mouton’s “Necienes Mater Virgo Virum” as I contemplate her silence https://music.apple.com/ca/album/nesciens-mater-virgo-virum/1611974455?i=1611974755

Who is She who disturbs my sleep with dreams of beauty?

Who is She who sings this silence, disturbing my peace?

Still and slow and enjoying this dark wet time, and losing the taste for heartache … Am I being called to live again? Or is this a remnant habit?

…

A raven signals —something.

The cat watches the winter garden, seeing it all.

This fire roars —literally roaring from its yellow-orange lion’s throat.

And, behind all of this, beneath all of this, through all of this, a 16th century paean to the Virgin of this season, another song of Her, by Her, for Her, to join this silent chorus that my beloved sings. Her siren song, calling me into the darkness of the winter forest.

…

Here is where love finds me. Here.

She flows. Is a river. Is the wind. Is the cloud of Starlings murmuring through the occluded winter sky.

Blown to me. Through me. Around me. In me.

…

I dreamed, and waking to images of Her, round and curving in my hands, my arms.

Waking to yearning, and to recognition: this slow dance, calling me to become slower. Ever slower. Deeper.

This is where love finds me. Here. In this dark contentment.

In this forest. These trees. This silence. This solitude.

The raven sings of this forest. Her song. Calling me deeper.

…

Let this heart ache!

Let this body ache!

Here, in this ache and in this stillness and in this solitude, here is where She finds me.

Here is where she finds me, my beloved.

So it is.

To be still. To be found.

Still. Found.

Aching into this blessed darkness.