by Jacqui Woodward-Smith

Your journey is not mine to choose,
     manipulate, to change or bend  
Life’s spiral path must have its way
     Its aim unclear until the end

You drifted deep inside your mind
A second and the veil reached out
I stand upon the distant shore
My call a futile, wordless shout

I call to you my joy, my father,
   as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
As daughter, call you ever homeward
    to stay with me for just a while

My soul shrinks to a grain of sand
To see your hard-fought words unborn
And yet your smile, my northern star,
Would bring the honey to the dawn

I call to you my joy, my father,
   as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
As daughter, call you ever homeward
    to stay with me for just a while

Words lost in too many words
The meanings far from tongue or ear
But I will listen in my dreams
   and in my heart your words I’ll hear

For you have walked the bitter edge where
   fear and love entwine in wild embrace
And you have kissed Her blood red mouth
   and gazed upon Her stone deep face

I call to you my joy, my father,
   as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
As daughter, call you ever homeward
    to stay with me for just a while

A deep-root oak, your spirit stands
Around we spin in praying dance
To pull you back from dark confusion
To sing you home from endless trance

Will you surface from Her cauldron
  Lost and caged or changed and healed?
Will life’s choices branch before you
Or has Her kiss your future sealed?

I call to you my joy, my father,
   as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
As daughter, call you ever homeward
    to stay with me for just a while

But heron comes to show the way
   through misty marshes of the mind
The edge of love, the edge of fear
The connection we were born to find

And when Crone Mother finally calls you
   to rest and change in dreaming womb
I will rejoice that you are with Her
But always feel you left too soon

I call to you my joy, my father,
   as priestess, to the Blessed Isle
As daughter, call you ever homeward
    to stay with me for just a while

Your journey is not mine to choose,
     manipulate, to change or bend
But it is my joy to walk with you,
     my father-child, your daughter-friend

©Jacqui Woodward-Smith, July – September 2004