An Affirmation

With her arm above the fire, her fist clenched tight, she moves it in circles as if stirring a great cauldron, her eyes closed in the trance, her body swaying to the music that fills her soul, as she breathes deeply, whispering the chant, to the thumping rhythm of her heart and her feet, at times hearing her own voice lifting out of the murmuring into a cry that shrieks with the wind and rocks in the trees. Another hand clutches hers, and then the third on the top, as all three women find their way to that very moment in time, slipping into the same current catching the same rhythm, stirring the ethereal black pot that sits upon the fire, brewing and bubbling up their desire.

From a distance, for periods, that seem utterly silent, swaying and stirring, three women around a fire in the centre of an ancient circle of stones. Then into the night, one voice then another rises up like a flurry of leaves in the wind, stirring up a cyclone, leaving a chill in the air, before falling back down, into the quiet hum of affirmation and slipping softly away into stillness. And sometimes the noise is laughter, wild and free, and sometimes their voices cut the air, with grief, like the keening of an old yet still brutal storm.

The fire catches at a log and blazes with light, casting long shadows of their dancing across the sheep-shorn grass. As slowly it softens into a reddening glow, one by one they raise their arms to the indigo skies and a single voice sings to the beauty of the stars.

Emma Restall Orr