Four Mosswood Poems

Griffin Rider

Track the griffin you once rode
to the airport where it lies caged and bound
under the control tower that plays
the jingle from the music box
you were given when you were six.
Free the winged lion. Feed it the manna
your controllers stole from its core.
See your bright dreamer awaken in its eyes.
Ride it again to find the girl whose mother let her
fall out of the sky but has been kept safe
in a garden on the dark side of the Moon,
When she is back in your heart,
ride to the House of Stone and Guilt
where the hag turns in circles of self-loathing
and offer forgiveness, the heart of healing.

 

Masks

“Put off your mask,” she says.
I tell her, “I’m not wearing one.”
“That is the best disguise.”
In this city, when people are unmasked
you see the false face behind the false face.
I do not speak of magicians.
They put  on masks to step into
the energy of an old god or a wild shaman,
a force of chaos, of disease or whirlwind,
and must then master that power
to bend it to their purpose.  If they fail
or wear the mask too long, it becomes poison.
Don’t wear any mask for too long
or you may find you have no face left
except the one molded by the role you played
or that you can’t find yours self in the mirror
because you have become a ghost of the living.

 

Heron Staff

The space is full of flapping and feathers
and discordant bird cries. I sit still
with my heron blue staff. I will remind them
there are right and wrong ways to call on gods.
I am enthroned between Hestia and Ogygia.
I must keep the balance. Any judgment I make
will be on myself as well as the bird people.

 

Surprises in Flight

I’m going up like a rocket to see my Teacher
in a higher world, a seventh heaven.
I have juice for the flight. Lift-off from my world tree
is flawless, and the drum frees me from the little mind.
I see over cities and continents. Then I am hooked,
rocking in midair, because a long arm has reached out
and plucked at my sleeve. I come down gracelessly
to join him on his balcony above the world.
He is impossibly beautiful, as always, in his white suit.
“We need to talk,” he says. “The Family are waiting for you,
up among the gods. But they want you to write more books
and deliver a lot more entertainment before you check out.
Don’t be in a hurry to leave. Enjoy what you can in a body.
We will be swapping places soon enough.”

- Mosswood Hollow, July 13, 2018