First you die,

Then you get their attention.

 

As he walks, the dust billows up

Around his feet, his grey ash staff

And settles, forming runic patterns

In his wake. Do not try to read them,

It would turn you mad before you got

Six paces ahead, so look instead at the staff.

One moment the classic wizard’s stick,

Bare as a winter tree, then on the ninth step

It is decorated with raven feathers, charms,

Other rattling things from his travels.

One eye slides from beneath his hat,

His lip curls, and the winds caress him

As if he had seduced them as well.

He once donned skirts  for a year, for wisdom;

He knows that path, and many others –

Freya’s road was simpler than the bloody one,

And that one he took too. His spirit-songs are galdr,

The names of runes sung over and over

The way one would caress one’s finest possessions.

He holds the highest post not in spite of all he did –

The wandering, the scars and hanging, the rending

Of Ginnungagap, but because of it.

No one can say to him, You did not work hard enough

For that wisdom. He, instead, can look you in the eye

And say, I would not expect anything of you

That I would not expect of myself. And then you are

In trouble. More than just a sorcerer, he knows

The mysteries of air and earth, of fire and water,

Of trees and plants and their healing, of blood stopping

And blood shedding, of transformation and song.

He knows the way to Death and beyond,

In a way that few others can say, and he is

Kin to all those who find they must walk that way.

 

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