Lughnasa                                Full Harvest Moon

At about 8:00/8:30 pm I drove over to Than Do to pick up some take out.  At the end of our cul de sac, a bit above the tree tops, was a golden harvest moon.  It stopped me.  The moon always catches me, draws my breath  up from deep within, a rush of exspiration.  Many of us have it, a mystical connection to the lesser light, its waxing and waning, the crescent moon with venus nearby, the full red moon of a lunar eclipse, the outsized floating golden orb of an October full moon, even the dark sky of the new moon, pregnant.

Many of my friends in the Woolly Mammoths devour poetry books.  I’m not a regular reader of poetry, more episodic, sometimes in binges.  I get onto poets through odd routes, like Antonio Machado whose poem, Pathmaker, now occupies the upper left of this webpage.  Paul Strickland has a mentioned Machado many times.  Machado is one of many non-English language poets Robert Bly has translated.

Machado, whom I had not read, appeared in an article I read about attempts to name the crimes of the Franco era in Spain and the strange reluctance of Spaniards to talk about the Spanish Republic which Franco overthrew, then destroyed with brutal force.

Machado is a poet/saint of the Republicans, buried in exile across the northern Spanish border in France where many of the Republicans fled when Franco defeated them in Spain.  The author of this article, a resident of  Barcelona, wrote of a moving celebration at Machado’s grave, a remembrance for those who fought and died, lost forever to their loved ones by burial in mass graves.

A single woman began chanting this poem, the Pathmaker, and all the others joined in, there at Machado’s tomb.

When I read it, I realized it was the perfect poem for Ancientrails.

Pathmaker, the path is your tracks,
nothing else.

Pathmaker, there in no path,
The path is made by walking.

And turning the gaze back,
Look on the trail that never will be
Walked again.

Pathmaker, there no path,
Only the wake on the sea.