I.
This memory is older than
The kitchen table just level with my forehead.
I can trace the pattern
on the plastic backs of the chairs:
Brown with drawn-on quilt patches.
This memory is bigger than
The stage where I'd just seen Swan Lake performed:
Which led to me twirling about
on the kitchen floor, announcing:
I'm going to be a ballerina.
This is before the grammar of ballet
entered my body.
There is no stage, it is our living room
With the lights off.
Candles are lit.
A folk song plays on the turntable.
I hold hands with my parents, and my brothers
And we dance.
The song is lost
The language is lost
The steps are lost
(If I even learned any steps.)
What remains:
Candles, a circle of hands, bright music
And my wish:
Can we dance in the dark tonight?
II.
Santa Claus,
Round, red and animatronic,
Welcomes me to the grocery store.
Ho, ho, ho: Are YOU ready for Christmas?
He presides over stacks of packaged cookies
Pastries in clamshell packets
Mandarin oranges in bright boxes.
An inflatable sleigh
Flies over the processed meat counter.
Robot Santa calls it Christmas
But he is a bit of a relic
Mostly in the temples of commerce
We call it The Holidays (capitalized)
Of course many of us no longer attend.
Instead there are domestic discussions
Over Amazon purchases
Shiny coupons on our screens give silent joy.
Each offering is tabulated on a credit card balance.
Every now and then
In between Robot Santa's speeches, a choir
Is overhead singing about Christmas.
Maybe it is an artifact
Of a cult in another kingdom
Where they dance in circles by candlelight.
Wherever it is,
I don't know the way back anyway.
III.
In this memory
I have turned off the fluorescent lights
(Economical but ugly).
The path to adulthood
Is sometimes easier to walk with the lights dimmed.
This is not yet an adventure
Taken on an eastbound airplane or
A bus at midnight, or
A sheep-framed road in the Hebrides.
This journey is between the most familiar of walls.
Paced out hour upon hour.
I am not wishing I was somewhere else.
I am somewhere else.
Not all distances are measured in miles.
IV.
A story from far away and long ago:
680 AD in Streoneshalh, or Whitby Abbey.
There was a man called Caedmon,
"Well-established in worldly life"
And advanced in age.
But alas for Caedmon, he had never learned any songs.
When there was a gathering at the mead-hall
An occasion for joy, where men would take turns with a harp
He would run away.
One night he left the banquet hall
After the harp came toward him,
And went out to the animal stables
Where he was to care for the cattle that night.
V.
Inside me
There are two wolves.
They stop by the woods on a snowy evening
Looking for two diverging roads.
One wolf takes the road to the mead-hall.
This is where I bring my children
To celebrations they can name.
They dance in circles
To songs whose words they know
Holding hands with friends
Who make the circle ever bigger.
Feast, abundance, tradition:
This is the gift I wish to give.
The other wolf takes a road
Which leads to an empty place, a fog
In which I dimly perceive
The songs, the languages, the prayers
I might have learned in childhood.
Here is a mirror
Too broken to show me my reflection
It is held by the wraiths of my ancestors
Who chose the less traveled road
Abandoning much along the way.
I did not choose this loss
It was bequeathed to me.
This road seems to lead nowhere, yet
I know I will take it again and again.
Every time the burden of compassion feels heavier.
One day, perhaps
I will have enough to present my old ghosts with gifts.
VI.
Caedmon went to sleep in the stable,
With the horses.
Then in a dream, some man stood by him.
Caedmon! Sing a song to me.
"I cannot sing," he replied.
"That is the reason I left the meadhall!"
Hwæðre þu meaht singan.
Nevertheless, you shall sing me something.
"What shall I sing?"
Sing me frumsceaft
Sing to me of creation.
When Caedmon received this answer,
He immediately began to sing
How God created the world,
In verses and words that had never been heard before.
VII
It wasn't a man that came to me
Last night in a dream.
But hlǣfdīġe, a lady.
I saw you standing at the end of a hallway.
I could barely make out your face,
But somehow I was expecting you.
The distance was suddenly too much,
And we ran toward each other
Embracing without a word.
There were no arguments to win or lose
Nothing said of reproach or regret.
Nor were there any words of wisdom
Or songs to last a thousand years.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised
For you are no angel and I am no saint.
In the dream,
We were silent.
It seemed like we could hear a distant choir.
Heaven, your roof
Middle-Earth, mankind's keeper
Praise forever
(c) December 2025 Síochána Arandomhan
Some sources, of information and inspiration to check out:
Bede's story of Caedmon from Heorot.dk for a transcription/translation (of course, this is one of many available online)
Two Pilgrim Tales (I love this so much)
I first encountered the story of Caedmon and Hild as a child, in a storybook. After I rediscovered it in university, it has remained in the background of all my adult life.
I wrote about Caedmon and Hild many years ago here. More recently, I recalled encountering the story in university in my blog The Saints.
I will never exhaust Caedmon's story; this bit of writing is only my latest encounter!
Links:
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