The Great Bear

‘it is never too late
for solstice stillness’

‘The Great Bear is placed at the Winter Solstice’
- The Wildwood Tarot

The bear is gone.
We have killed her.
But still she haunts
the night sky

appearing white
before the cerulean,
green, yellow, pink
of the Northern Lights.

Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
Trace their outlines
by starlight
like a dot to dot.

Arth Mawr ac Arth Bach.
The Light of Arthur
doomed to become
a smiting sword.

The Great Bear
looks down on her killers.
A cilvilisation knowing
no hibernation,

a people forgetting
how to rest,
who cannot stop
producing or consuming,

slaves to ceaseless
economic growth,
fuelled by the winnings
from Arthurian wars.

I see her approaching
from the North
with blood
on her teeth and paws.

She has eaten her young
as they have no future.
She has swallowed
the Light of Arthur.

She has come to tell us
to lie down and die,
to learn to return
to the mounds.

It is always too late
but it is never too late
for solstice stillness,
to be reborn.

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Lorna Smithers

Lorna Smithers is a poet, author, awenydd, and Brythonic polytheist. She is currently exploring how our ancient British myths relate to our environmental and political crises and dreaming new stories. As a devotee of Gwyn ap Nudd, a ruler of Annwn, she seeks to reweave the ways between the worlds. She has published three books: Enchanting the Shadowlands, The Broken Cauldron, and Gatherer of Souls and edited A Beautiful Resistance. She blogs at Signposts in the Mist.

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