Caught within the crushing grip of grieving,
the preacher told me
“God takes and gives;
it isn’t ours to judge or question.”
Yet when I turned away,
accepting of his creed,
Cernunos took my hand
and tugged me back around
to warming sunrise,
his tails wrapped around my grief,
to whisper echoing,
“Do you wish eternal sadness,
or the spending
of your lifetime
celebrating hers?”

When I found another
decades later,
to hold my heart in pleasure
once again,
The Murdered God proclaimed
“There: I have deigned to show thee mercy”.
But when I turned away so thankfully
Isis’ supple voice
pulled me back into sweet evening,
saying laughingly:-
“My husband’s child Horus felt your pain
and set another in your path;
how you love this one will resonate
across Ptah and Nuit
to reach the heart of whom you lost
and fill her with delight.”

So I am alive,
graying old yet full of living,
the pain of losing one
filled by the other
and the sons she gave me;
the Frowning God Of Disapproval thunders
“You must bow down to me”.
But Odin’s standing by my side,
his ravens perched upon my shoulders
on this mountaintop of life
as I gaze outwards
across my living past
to the World-Tree
and future
reaching up into the stars,

Odin’s smiling, saying:
“All of this is yours
and always will be,
worshipful of me or not,
for you lost one
and took so long
to find another,
yet through that trial
you have never turned away