Original poem

The Holyday
Gawaine Caldwater Ross


Through the rays of holy light
I ambled in the forest green,
Filtering through the morning mist
The sound of distant water falling.
Deer leapt off across the ferns,
Cedar trees some ten feet thick
Lay across steep wet ravines.
I was treading on the sacred ground
Of Eartha and her swelling mounds:
Oh She was fully sexed that day.
In my mind I walked with Embla
The very first woman, born of an elm,
And I was Ask, the mighty ash
Thick and tall and proud and strong.
We stepped across the Rainbow Bridge
And found a soft place in the grass
For rooting in the summer sun.
She was human, and yet more,
Someone to love, and to adore.
No open space beneath a dome
Of church or mosque or synagogue
Can ever claim to be as pure
As the mountain sky so high and blue
We inhaled as we drifted through
The heartscape of our lives entwining.