WINGS ON OUR FEET

Or Wings of Soul

When do we receive the urge to change? Are we born with this or is it something that develops within and when the time is right, we make the move.

My mother always told me I had wings on my feet. Sometimes talent or education makes up our minds for us to travel. At other times it is a spiritual feeling within the soul, a desire to follow a certain path that will help us make sense of our role as a human being and assist us to explore the role we play here upon this planet.

Some stay in the same region all their lives because of ties to family and what is familiar to them, especially in the farming communities because of ties to the land.

I remember when I was a young teenager, a little blue van pulled up outside our door in Ireland. An Indian man got out and made his way to our front door with a tray of scents. My father answered and my curiosity got the better of me so I had to see what this stranger had to sell. He was all dressed in white with a white turban on his head. It was most unusual to see someone like this in that part of the country. Not only that, but he had stopped the van at our house, the third one in a row of ten, so he was not taking his wares through the village.

He had rows of glass bottles, very ornate, and he urged us to smell the scents. These were exotic. I had never in my life smelled anything like them, nor could I relate to any flower I knew that grew in my mother’s garden. I was intrigued.

He then made the mistake of asking my father if he could marry me and was quickly chased away, the door abruptly closed.

I watched the van pull away, wondering if I had imagined the whole incident, but the scent in the bottles had an effect on me.

My curiosity about India increased over the years. I found out about vegetarianism and Yoga, finding teachers, discovering paths. I loved mythology and also fell into an East/West comparative spirituality that has served me all of my life.

In travels throughout the world, I realized it was the scent of the lands that awakened feelings of remembrance. In India, Japan, Hong Kong, Turkey, Israel, Italy, the scents in the air drew me, some atmospheres stronger than others, across deserts, beside seas and rivers. Certain trees I had never seen before flashed into my mind, never to be forgotten. In England, there are copper beeches that I notice and know on certain roadsides and in fields. One ‘umbrella’ tree that stretches across the road in Oxfordshire I acknowledge every time I pass it. I have a well-loved Witchhazel Ironwood tree with adjoining five trunks to spread its beauty in the arboretum. It lives in the North and is the first to bud in Spring and the first to hail the Autumn, outside my bedroom window…turning into red leaves of fire, delighting me every morning. It is like living in an ever changing painting…. I feel the world is like this…. so beautiful and yet in some places so scarred because of wars and upheavals. In Spain recently, I loved the shapes of the semi-tropical trees and the giant cacti, the scents of some of the flowers in multiple clusters even in juxtaposition on the edge of a roller-coaster theme park, a complete charge to the senses, in the middle of nowhere. I wonder if others carry maps in their heads like this, as if marking pathways we have trodden in the past, even the distant past, or to serve to remind us possibly in a future life. We try to befriend and make the strange familiar. It is a human habit to repeat scenes in order to keep knowledge within us, probably something rarely spoken about with others. Babies learn everything by repetition.

Some folks stay in one country all of their lives and do not travel at all. I met someone on the Isle of Man who lived in Peel and had never visited the other side of the Island. I knew a coal-man in Ireland who had never seen the sea and used to admire an Aunt’s painting of Mullaghmore. She wrote his name on the back of it, and when she passed away, it was given to him.

I have written poetry and recalled many of these places in the world, especially while on world tour with my late husband. However, coming home is always a comfort or a surprise, a time to rest the wings, like the migrating birds, seeking a safe roost.

This is one such poem about going home to my parents years ago, both of whom have sadly passed on in their own journeys.

HOME… AT LAST

Why did you give me a world to roam?

Lands that would take me away from my own?

Oh God, forgive me, how long has it been?

How long has it been since my folks I have seen?

The warm sweet smell of the newly mowed grass,

Roses and wallflowers sentinels in masse,

The salt-wet taste of a late summer mist

And the shamrocks in abundance, the dew always kissed.

But, where are the trees that lined the dell?

Where is the brown gate I knew so well?

My heart is heavy, my throat is sore,

Then I see them standing at the door,

My mother beams a tearful smile,

My father grips my hand in style.

I laugh and cry. They seem so small.

I remember well when they were tall.

How long since… five years, nine, ten?

But I was young and restless then.

A short road abroad, a long road home,

Some letters, some cards,

A few drawings, and often a poem.

The fire is big, the house is small,

The love is big and I’ve grown tall.

No need to roam,

I am home… at last.

***

This, of course, refers to my birth home. However, I wonder about a soul home. It has to be beyond the physical world, where soul light resides before human births are taken again. Is this the only planet we can call Home in this vast Universe?

We have wings on our feet, but I am sure we also have wings of soul.

DWINA ***