Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
They asked a Chinese man, "What is science?" He said, "Science is knowing people." Then they asked, "And what is virtue?" He answered, "Virtue is loving people." — Tolstoy, from his Calendar of Wisdom for 27 January Yesterday was my birthday. I am not going to say which one, but that’s more because I like… Continue reading The Daily: 27 January 2023
Turn your head and squint at the stories you’ve been told and you may see the traces. Delicate razor-thin reminders. Forgotten runes etched deep into memory. Ghostly echoes inherited through the ages. We know what we do not remember, what we have disregarded until the capacity to see is lost. But it is still there,… Continue reading Palimpsest
Sunrise over the Cerro Pelado Fire, Jemez Caldera, New Mexico opening day’s eye pierces dawn shredding fragile cloud with sun daggers rising light enlivening early lizards on red rocks warming creosote bush scent and following the dipping dance of the hummingbird salt cedars stand sentinel through the drought in spectral rivers of sand where the… Continue reading caldera summer sunrise
new leaves in the arbor here is a seed my soul-gift to the future a self i cannot know but in dreams and divination yet though I cannot see certain am i hope spreads roots in this soil here lives joy abundance great care in this mattering nature dwells nurturing spirit no, no divide is… Continue reading planting
Born Again (Nacer de Nuevo) by Remedios Varo (1960) she is breaching reaching through rent flesh for hearth sense brushing past grasping cilia and bleached branches deserting the void-dark garden of ghosts coming into the clotted intimacy of small spaces penetrating deep the root-riddled walls of womanhood she is suffused with maiden’s hopeful lust one… Continue reading coming through wisdom
i came across a forgotten sugar bush craggy boles as wide as doors to another time bark cracking and sap-dampened with abandoned tap-holes writing jagged lines layers of leaf mould counted more than my years and heartwood ringed older than human endeavors on this inhospitable hillside primordial mother trees these and all about each grand… Continue reading the lesser species
Come, now a roundel by Arthur Rackham (1908) she made her feathered nest in the tangled boughs of oak, ash, thorn and found mushroom echoes of moonbeams she delved for essence among the hawthorn roots and brought woven certainty to light she entered the ring where faeries are dancing and knew the wheel’s ceaseless turning… Continue reading the thorn path
the thorn queen she waxes full in fertile grace queen of quick and fay, she reigns in mantle green and seemly face quelling fear and mortal pains eternal mother, ever maid undying wisdom in her glance deathless weird is on her laid to spin th' unceasing wheel of chance again, she comes in crown of… Continue reading Bealtaine
we are the bonfire on the mountain the light in the waning days we are the chthonic mothers the crones singing lullabies under dark moons we are the eyes on trespass the elder judges, pockets brimming with vindication we are the keepers of truth the guardians on the gates of futures unbroken we are the… Continue reading balefire
We have a fraught relationship with trees. To mask our utter dependence on the green world and to justify taking whatever we desire from the planet, we have stripped even the possibility of consciousness from other life forms, woody ones in particular. We name them resources, so that the value of trees is determined only… Continue reading Arbor Day
By My Solitary Hearth 