Invocation
to Manannan Mac Lir and Gate Opening
(The original, not what was actually said)
Floating in safe, warm, amniotic fluid.
The quiet lapping of waves against the boat hull beside your ear, lulling
you to sleep.
Catching crabs in rock pools
Endless ripples in the mud, echoing the waves of the receding tide.
Reeling in two dozen mackrel sailing through a school, and feeding all
the neighbouring boat crews on reaching port.
Stepping ashore with one easy step, then climbing three stories down the
slippery sea wall to reach the boat a few hours later.
Falling off waves longer than the boat.
Being sea sick the first, and only the first, sail of the year.
Rowing down the street in front of the house.
The smell of salt and spray in the air.
Watching cormorants diving for fish.[1]
Herring gulls that WONT GO AWAY.
Waves, pushed by three thousand miles of wind, hitting the sea wall and
leaping twenty feet into the air.
A hundred Chinese immigrants trapped on a sand bank by the rising tide,
calling home on cell phones as the water swallowed them. [3]
Riptides where the Atlantic rushes to meet itself, half a gale behind
you
barely holding you against the flow. [2]
Gliding over still water on a bright spring morning.
The ocean gives and the ocean takes
The sea is a merciless killer
A tempremental lover
Wild and gentle
Driven by the moon and sun
and the ever changing wind.
Manannan Mac Lir, we bid you welcome.
Known
changes that were actually said:
[1] "And you sit on the shore and watch the birds diving in for
their breakfast."
[2] "The waves and winds blow you different directions and you end
up not moving at all."
[3] "The last anyone heard of them, they were calling home on their
cell
phones as the sea swallowed them up."
Gate
Opening:
This
well is a gate, this tree is a gate,
all this pretty fire is certainly a gate.
Manannan Mac Lir,
Master of the sea between the lands of my birth
Lord of the ocean between the Old World and the New World
Walker between worlds, here and Elsewhere.
... {this line of the gate opening was lost in the liminal
spaces between ritual and memory} ...
Let these gates be open
Malcolm