The Furious Spinner

Last night I stood in the dark in the snow, a bright moon illuminating the outdoors like a spotlight. Running toward me was a man and a pack of wolves. I was transfixed by the scene, but something kept pulling on me, distracting me—until finally I came awake to the sound of a chorus of coyotes somewhere outside our home. I stumbled to the window and breathed in star light, cool black air —and the songs of the coyotes. One after another they stopped, then started again, their voices coming from various directions, finding their community in the music of their howls. I was glad they had called to me...

...yet I wondered why I dreamed of black wolves instead of dirty gold coyotes.

Days earlier I squatted next to my squash plants and whispered to them. "Please grow me some vegetables," I said. "What do you need?" Nourishment. So I decided to make compost tea, a suggestion from my friend Linda. I got up, retrieved the shovel from the patio, then lifted the top layers of the compost pile until I came to the delicious glorious rotted-into-black soil. I started to shovel out the composted compost when I saw something blond and round. Gingerly, I moved the soil until I realized the gold was a small yellow finn potato. I took it out from the darkness and shifted the earth carefully again. This time I discovered an entire nest of yellow finn potatoes! That's what they looked like—a nest of the eggs of cave birds, nuggets of smooth round gold, or baby suns getting ready to be birthed. None were attached to a potato plant. They were virgin: whole and unto themselves, each and every one of them. I got a small clay cauldron and put the potato gems into them. Later, I boiled them with pieces of my sacred rosemary plant, then sauteed them in olive oil and ate them. They tasted like buttery Earth...

A few days earlier, I built a small cairn on the hillside next to the compost pile in honor of the Celtic sun goddess Aine, the faery queen. It is said she had a faery palace on a hill where she spent her days "spinning the sunbeams and making gold cloth of the thread." I do not worship a sun god, but I honor the Invisibles. I looked at the small cairn made of four flat stones and hoped she liked her gift. I wondered what would come of it... 0 comments

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