The Spirit of the Land

When I was in my teens, for students over thirteen, our school had “activities” in Friday afternoon, which ranged from drama to the CCF. Not liking the idea of military square bashing, I opted for drama, but all the places were taken, and I ended up in the unpromisingly named “Museum Studies”.

How wrong I was about it! It was later renamed “Island Field Studies” which far better described its three terms, looking at local geology, archaeology and history. I enjoyed the geology and history, but what really took my breath away was archaeology.

For an island of 45 square miles, Jersey has a high density of Neolithic sites, including 9 dolmens (often wrongly called passage graves), 5 menhirs or standing stones, and other sites of interest. I had never before seen these large stone structures, and I found my first sight of them not only breathtaking, but spiritually moving as well. There was something about them that called to me, and told me that these were sacred tribal spaces.

On my mothers side, many generations, as far as I could trace my family tree, had lived in Jersey, and I even wondered if some distant and remote ancestor had helped to build these massive stone structures, which stand out from the landscape but also fit in organically as part of it, like a Henry Moore sculpture.

The Neolithic sites were well documented in a book by the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes (the only one available on them back then!), which I read avidly. And I still revisit the dolmens, and draw strength from them. I have tried to capture something of that connecteness to those dolmens, and growing up on a small Island, where the sea was often within earshot, in this poem for Beltane, entitled “The Spirit of the Land”

The Spirit of the Land 

I hear the cry of the gulls on  the shore
Hear the waves crashing on the sand
A poetry in motion that I forever adore
And I connect to the spirit of the land

A dolmen, made of massive granite stones
Flowers left as a votive offering  here do grace
The ancestors tale: grave goods and bones
A thousand years back, and today: sacred space

The bonfire blazes brightly on the hill top
Dance around, hold hands, chant and pray
Let the weather be good, bless the crop
Blessed be the harvest, blessed be today

Here are Beltane blessings, blessings three
And the spirit of the land comes close to me