Gedesa A Prose Poem

Hi all,

I was looking at Sally's Solstices 1 and 2 (entitled Solstices Past in this blog), when I saw-in-one-then-didn't-in-another what I first perceived as a blue-she-wolf, but then I realised of course it wasn't, it was ... the subject of the prose poem that I've written in response ... it was supposed to be just a few lines long, but the story was complex than I first thought ...

it will be valuable to view Sally's images in reference to the poem ...

and I've a strong feeling that the prose poem formatting I've applied has not travelled well to the land of blog ... ne'er mind, you get the picture ... :-)

I hope you like it Sally!?

Fi




A Prose Poem

Gedesa

Slipping through the bindings of a spell she has fallen to the wetland edges of the riverside meadow overlooking if she cared to the sandbanks and the mudflats and the tiers of the salty-marsh.

Not yet a goddess but a godling in the making. A budding elemental. Responding to the pull of an ancient kinship to the rivers and the seas and to the all that lies above them and below, to the all that lies behind them and within.

A brindled mare at first and fleeting glance, she is secret and lost twin to Pegasus. Like Pegasus, conceived in the mingling of Medusa's blood as it flowed across a shoreline, with the sea foam that was saliva from Poseiden's tongue.

Gedesa.

Travelling by deliberate choice and random chance, her journeys have been far across distance and time. But for this next and greatest adventure of death and rebirth she is here on the Stroatian banks of the Severn.

She falls through the spellbound skies during an hivernian-solstice, at the setting of the sun.
She lays on her riverside cot deep in entranced sleep, hidden from the eyes of mortal and immortal worlds, until the second day of February when she awakes to an imbolcine dawn.

For a further seven days and nights she is compelled to hold curious court with a solitary courtier, Parascheva. Saintly Parascheva, blessed inspiration of embroiderers and spinners, seamsters and weavers, trips to and from her celestial haberdasheries to collect enchanted silks and satins and fantastical fabrics made of moonstone and cat's eye, turquoise and larimar, robin's egg and aqua.
Completing the charm Gedesa folds the clothwork over and over and over inside of itself, creating with phyllian artistry a breathing textile that knits with her skin, merges with her flesh. Until it breathes as a part of her, an organic organza, a godling's supernatural livery. Until Gedesa becomes magical-feathered and mystical-finned, able whenever she will desire it to fly like a bird through the skies or swim like a fish in the oceans.


On the morning of the seventh day Parascheva takes her leave
Gedesa lies on the riverbank waiting for dusk and the night's lunar eclipse.

Gedesa gazes into the sky. She sees the echo-reflection of a constellation of stars where her brother will shine one day.

Kalliope, Melpomene and Kleio
Terpsichore, Erato, Polymnia
Thaleia, Euterpe, and Ourania

Gedesa knows of the nine Muses who are her twin's joyous fate.
But she has had no Bellerophone to lead her.
She has followed her own path to fortune.

When the hour arrives, the earth's shadow creeps across the full moon whose skin from forehead to chin turns a coppery red as the last rays of sunlight stream around the body of the earth to stroke the face of that special moon

As she stands at the riverside, listening to the urgent cries of dunlin and redshank, of whimbrel and plover, and the rush-whisper-rush of lamprey and shad, of salmon and sea-trout, and the ripples of returning elvers

she feels Medusa's fingers combing out her hair
and Poseiden's breath on her neck,

and she hears the song of the sirens,
Muses of the sea
as they call to her

and in the sweeping wave of a high spring tide
fulfilling her own unprophesied destiny
finally free

she is gone