Lament for Dylan

Lament for Dylan

The sea mourns the beloved child,
endless tides rise and fall, whispering
and screaming a perpetual lament.
The surf on the sand pounding its grief
for the child:

tragically caught by his uncle's spear,
he sank into the waves, consumed
but apart.

The tide lashes and hisses,
the sea vows to avenge the child's death.

The tide turns away in sorrow then slowly
creeps back;
retreating and returning,
it will go on forever
for the loss of the one who
loved the sea so dearly.

The tide swells and recedes in sadness
unending, unthinking.
Memory of the dark child starts to fade
as years slip past.
Vows of vengeance long forgotten,
the sea never ceases to mourn;
Though his face has faded,
the sea remembers the child.

The tide rises and falls
rocking in rhythm unending;
no rest, no tiring as the ages have moved on.
The sea has long forgotten the child
it has mourned for nearly eternity.

Forgotten except for a rare moment
on a foggy grey morning
or a stormy black night-
a whisper of mist
or a splash of rain
will stir the memory
and a face will flicker,
laughing and playing
in the waves
lifetimes ago.
And for a minute, the sea
will recall the beloved child.


(Meandering a bit off of my usual subject matter of Greek gods and myth into Welsh myth, this one was inspired by the death of Dylan Ail Don, speared accidentally by his uncle, Govannon.)

Hail Zeus, Bringer of Storms!

On Tuesday evening, I was walking to the train to go to work. From where I was to the nearest train stop was about a twenty-minute walk. When I had last glanced out a window before leaving where I was, the sky was clear with jsut a few clouds. In the twenty minutes or so from that point until I got outside, the sky had suddenly become heavy with very dark, ominous clouds- large patches of a very green tint to many of them suggested strong tornado potential- though that didn't bother me too much, since it is a fairly rare thing for tornadoes to touch down within large cities. The clouds though were pretty impressive. I tried to take some pictures with my cell phone camera but they didn't come out very well. There was this one large swirl of clouds that curved across the sky like an immense, sweeping arm- that and another cloud formation that I can't really easily describe also looked like strong indicators of tornado potential.

But beyond that...well, I've never really gotten a sense of Zeus before, and I had this sudden "knowing" that he was behind all this- it didn't feel anything like what I feel in the presence of the gods that are more familar to me, like Apollo, Hermes or Dionysus- I can only really describe it as feeling as if there was a distant, over-arching sentience to the sky, and one of the thoughts I had was that the long, sweeping arm of clouds that I saw was one of Zeus's arms.

The last stretch of my walk to the train stop took me down a long, winding hill which was rather busy with traffic at the time, and rain was starting to fall and I didn't have an umbrella on me, and REALLY didn't want to be stuck out in the sort of rain that was on the way. So I did the best thing I could think of- I had a drink in my backpack side pocket, pulled that out, and poured a bit out, asking him to let me get to the train stop- or at the very least to the bridge before it (the walk to that train stop takes me under a raised section of Interstate 83 and over a stream it's pretty cool, so that's either six or eight lanes of highway there, can't remember exactly- provides considerable shelter. I was about a hundred feet from there when the rain started to get heavier and just made it as it really started pouring. Thankfully, l I only had to wait a few minutes before it let up and I could continue to the train stop, another fifty yards away or so. Thunder, lightning and the occasional splatter of rain continued and trains going in my direction were rather heavily delayed for reasons unknown to me, but only for a brief few minutes did I have to duck under an overhang again, and for a decent chunk of the time, I was able to talk to Gavin on the phone. Unfortunately, while I was sitting at the train stop, most of this had left my head on all but a very basic intellectual level and in the midst of training a new guy at work and being ridiculously tired for a few days, I forgot about all this until I was on my way back to work this gorgeous, sunny afternoon, and I wrote this:


Hail Zeus, Labrandeus, whose furious storms race across the sky!
Hail Zeus, Skotitos, whose swirling clouds gather and darken the sky!
Hail Zeus, Keraunios whose crashing thunder echoes through the sky!
Hail Zeus, Astrapaios whose flash of lightning tears the sky!
Hail Zeus, Ombrios whose falling rain pours down from the sky!
Hail Zeus, Euenemos whose fair winds come again to clear the sky!

Wow...

It's been a year now, that Gavin and I are together (officially anyway. We've been together since we first met, it just took a while to realize it.)

It's been crazy. A lot has been so unexpected and surprising. And scary sometimes. I never wanted to be this close to anyone- and here I am. I never thought I could want to have someone with me so constantly.

I just never saw myself as being able to fall in love like this.

Happy anniversary, love!