This poem is very personal to me. It was dreamed through in August 2024 after sharing a Rites of Initiation weekend with my then - 15 year old daughter, a few months prior. This is a space I have had the privilege to access for over twenty years whenever I felt the call to be amongst a circle of women to ritual and be held deeply in times of need, in times of threshold crossings.
A space I still hold sacred, profoundly influencing my remembrance of the deep feminine current which now threads through my days. I carried my daughter in my belly within these temple walls, so this poem marks a full‑circle moment: the time had come for her to step into the tent herself, to be received by the women, to be welcomed into the lineage she has been woven into since before birth. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Everything spoken in the poem — the rituals with my sisters, the dreaming beforehand, the signs and stirrings — were real, lived events. This piece is my way of honouring that crossing, that initiation, that moment when the women gathered and my daughter took her place among them.
I kneeled in front of the old grandfather gum tree
The ground my alter
The sand and dirt clinging to my knees
I spiral leaves and sticks before me,
gently and slowly
and at the centre
place the bones and stones of the Ancient Ones
My Samhain ancestral shrine
To remember the red and broken threads
of those who came before me… from the bottom of time.
I sit
I weep
I bow my head and lay my hands upon the earth
And before I could speak
I heard their voices, a thousand murmurs
a crescendo choir of cicadas
‘Beloved’, they spoke, ‘you have journeyed far and wide,
You have traversed deep territory these past years,
waded through the rivers of our unwept tears
and sung the songs of our unspoken sorrows
We know, we know, we followed…
your voyage down, down, down.
And we thank you.
Your tears are our Holy Water.
We drank, and drank them up and are no longer thirsty, because of you, beloved daughter”
I sat up and tilted my head towards the setting sun,
my lips quivering
my heart swelling
and the voices now a harmonious melody,
“Daughter, it’s time now to look at those in front of you. The past will always bleed through to the present, but we free you now from the grip of what has been. Go light the Children’s Fire. They need you now. They need you now’
So I lit the Children’s Fire, in the sandstone round
Flames, red, orange and gold
Burning with love
Smoke engulfing gratitude
of the next path forward
Oh! Give me the fortitude!
To help carry the flame
I proclaim…
Oh Sisters, of the East, North, West and South!
my Ninsuburs
who sit and witness in the shadow nest of Tawny Frogmouth!
I have already journeyed long into the dark,
the Old Ones said it’s time to light the spark,
so Sister Witches!
Sing me into the future!
Sing me into the future!
And the women sang the songs of sorrow
And keened me into the daylight of tomorrow
With the cool wind in the trees
With the warmth of the fire
With the waters of their wombs
And the earth woven with the moon
They sung me into the future!
In my dreams…
The drumming lasted three days and three nights
Into my dreams, the healing rose
Rose up and down with the ocean tides
In my dreams, the smoke, the feathers, the rattles,
humming and drumming,
humming and drumming
In my dreams, I am now laid upon the hallowed ground,
humming and drumming
humming and drumming
My daughter comes into view and rests on my body
Belly on belly
Our faces touch, arms stretched out
Fingers intertwined
our wings, big and wide without a doubt
And below,
and below we feel the bodies of our Grandmothers
One upon each other, carefully stacked
A thousand Greats back
Holding us,
their breasts, their limbs entangled
with the knotted roots and mushroom shoots
A thousand Greats backs, our Grandmothers
Singing us into the future,
with their ancient breath
One moon passes and it’s the veil before Yule
I have not come alone this time
We arrive at the Temple Gates, together
My daughter and I
to circle with the women, oh my
She has been in my womb within these walls
Oh! But now it’s her turn to feel the Call
Of her deepest longings
A place of red thread belonging
She hears the women speak in the circle round
All faces and shapes of the Deep Feminine Abound
The rage
The grief
The love
And disbelief
The numbness
The joy
The wild
The tame
The knots and hollowness of the deepest shame
The perfection
The divine affection
And the surging disconnection
All of it!
Every magnificent piece!
Pieces I could not offer to Her on my own
A tapestry of fullness,
in Sisterhood,
it’s only sown
Then, it is Her time to speak
She leaps right in, and offers Her voice into the Centre
Looking at the women
Sharing her young wise heart
and inner dreaming
She speaks
She speaks
She speaks
And then it is my turn, and
I look at Her
I look around at the women
I see the thousand Great grandmothers staring back at me
in their reflections
Their eyes glowing like fire flies,
They know
They know what this means
For so long the Wells have run dry
Forbidden
Destroyed
And forgotten
Down, down, my mother and father lines
Down, down, and not just mine
they all intertwine,
no one can deny
Here. Now.
I witness my daughter
speaking into the Holy Well
I throw my hands to the sky
I throw my arms to the sacred ground
And weep,
cascades of tears of joy and grief
I weep
I weep
Hands on my belly and my heart
I laugh
I am taken back for a moment,
back to the old gum tree
I can hear them
I can hear them
And I join in
the cicadas chorus,
the humming
the drumming
The peace I feel
The peace I feel
So natural, my daughter by myside
The. Peace. Is. Immense
it makes such divine sense
Anchored into the ancient and the new
I smile
I join in
And we sing, and we sing
Not Down
But Up
Up the red thread
Up through the roots and mushrooms shoots
and Up and Out into a path of stardust
The Song for Us
The Song of Her
The Song of the Future
