She is the colour of ripening
wheat, the sweet golden gloaming from green to gold. At the tip of her turning,
tilting back towards the earth. A bird in flight reaching its zenith and
sailing on open wings towards the ground. She comes with the full moon,
bringing the light; she is the light.
None more beautiful, her sorrow is that of the mother, for
it is only as mothers we are truly made mortal, that we can truly know loss. The
loss first of ourselves, of the identity we have built, however fragile, around
ourselves and the knowledge that if we lost this most precious thing then all else would be lost to us. The love we have for our children, weather they be born or not,
weather they survive or don't, will dash our towers to the ground.
Branwen is the exhalation of the year, as the life breathes
out, sighs out, and into the ether. She is amber resin, she is the key to the
door, if not the door itself.
Poor tortured Branwen, the most beautiful soul ever
seen. As tangible as life itself and always out of reach. Cut your hair, let it
fall amongst the ripening wheat.
Branwens story is the most tragic, perhaps then she was the
most mortal of all goddesses, she loved the most and lost the most of all. So
beloved that we would stride an ocean just to be beside her.
White raven, on a dark, dark night. The wind in her
feathers, flying high over the storm.
Sailing forth from the Ireland of the mighty, she was a pawn, exchanged
not for love but power and to Ireland she was married.
But losing her son and then her brother broke her heart into
four pieces.
