Poetry for Wild Spirits

A Bandrui... a Druid Bard, my life and calling comes through the inspiration I find in the Wild Spirits of nature and through the practise of animism.As the wheel of the year and seasons turn through their natural cycles and, when as humans, we fall off that wheel, we lose touch with the magick that dwells in all things and in all sentient life, including our own.Seasons don’t move in a straight line, they are fluid and circular, leading one into another, seamlessly. Only humankind see their lives as straight lines, from birth to death and yet, so many times we change our mind, deviate from the original plan, cycling back to another starting point or rush to the end of something before it’s truly begun. We wear ourselves out with this concept of time. Look around in nature... there are no straight lines and no clocks.Animism is the practise of seeing all life as sentient and animate, each with its own character and spirit... no two the same, for no two humans are either. Each creature... each leaf, stem, flower, pod, bark and individual species are not the same but unique... all are one.So in my world the first step is to connect to, ’Genius Loci’ the Spirit of Place and to call on this deep, earth energy for communication, experiences within the realms of nature and a continued growth in understanding how this realm of vast energy works, i.e. the seasonal changes and cycles as they unfold, all apparently without ’instruction,’ rather through a seeming, ’rightness’ of moment, an intuitive knowing, for if all life is sentient, animate, then there is an underlying knowing as to when the first buds appear, the first bird sings, the first creature emerges from it’s winter burrow.This little volume expresses the wonderful energies that live and play in nature... Penny Reilly, 2022.