The Dee As A Deity Poem by Sheena Blackhall

#Sometimes she stabilises.
Sometimes she surges and floods
Like a burst aneurysm

When I look at her I grow perky
As a falcon rending a mouse

She talks with the tongues of water
This Druid Goddess
Don't walk in out of your depth
She will catch your breath

People kneel by her side
To weep, make love, to rest

She babbles the gossip of the Bens
The tales of peaty tributaries
She welcomes incomers, animals
Slips down throats like silk

A schizophrenic lady, she has a dark side
Bards write songs and poems to her,
Their water muse, who coils like an adder
Home to the salmon, the otter
Pearl mussel and speckled trout

Forests rinse roots in her pools
Alder buds and willows peep in her mirrors

Her power is burgeoning
Her bens and castles share their bloody stories

This is a mythic river, an alchemist
Transforming water to gold

Horses dream in the pastures of her glens
Brides snap their wedding moments by her side

Her waters break, give birth to shoals of silver
Starshine seams her sides. She flowers in pools
Like a lotus, like a spreading skirt of petals

Often and ever I've sat, entranced on her banks
In her valleys, beside her watery corridors
Thirled to her swirls and currents.

Each evening I drowse with her sounds in my head
Like the strumming of Orphic lutes