BELTANE

Song of Beltane

I am the calm, I am the quickening.
I am the intoxication and the force,
I am the silence, I am the singer,
I am the bright pavilion and the feasting,
I am the wedding couple and the bed,
I am the morning chorus and the heartbeat,
I am the goal to which all paths are led.

by Caitlin Matthews

Life breaking free. Exuberant. Joyous. Unfettered. A “hey we made it through another winter!”

Celtic summer, Beltane. And it’s a balmy fifty degrees in Dublin. In fact their extended forecast is similar to ours. Temps in the fifties and partly cloudy. Maybe the beginning of summer isn’t tied to a date, it’s based on hope and the belief that the sun will shine and it will warm up. Eventually.

The rhodies are blooming, I think the snow damaged the dogwood blossoms, they’re sparse this year. If you get behind and don’t trim your rosemary it blooms in the spring with a beautiful blue violet flower and the bees love it. They also love the blueberry blossoms.

Don’t have space for great bonfires. Don’t have any sheep or cows to drive between them to give them good luck in the summer pastures and there’s not a maypole in sight. So what. In Oregon summer is more of a promise than a certainty so I’ll go dig out that last bottle of sparkling cider, put on David Arkenstone at his raucous best, light a candle and raise a glass to summer.