POEM: Wild English Rose (Glastonbury)
An offering for the Summer Solstice, composed while walking in Glastonbury this morning.
I planned a trip to Glastonbury on the summer solstice—by happy accident. Wanting to break up a very-urban, early-summer trip to Europe with a little R&R, I proposed a side-trip to the English countryside. It was only after we booked the house and car that I realized we’d be there on the solstice.
I’ve wanted to visit Glastonbury for over a decade—since the earliest days of my awakening to the Divine Feminine and call to restore ancient feminine wisdom traditions. The Chalice Well, the original spring around which the town formed, is one of the best-known pre-Christian goddess sites. The water flows rich and red, tinted by and tasting of iron, like blood. The well lies at the base of a dramatic natural land formation called the Tor. Rising steeply, 500 feet above the surrounding flatlands, the Tor is rumored to be the site of Avalon, a mythical island realm ruled by priestesses, the place where King Arthur was taken to die after his last battle. In the twelfth century, the tombs of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere were allegedly found at the Abbey in Glastonbury.
There’s no question there’s a strong feminine presence at Glastonbury. On the surface, there are just a lot of women. I’ve never been to a town or village so filled with female pilgrims. They wander in and out of shops filled with crystals, tarot, fairy paraphernalia, witch supplies, flower garlands—speaking to each other familiarly and intimately as pilgrims do. They know they’re amongst sisters. A woman at the chalice well shared her tiny hotel towel with me to dry my feet after walking in the healing waters. A shopkeeper reverently explained the Celtic goddesses to me and my girls as we browsed. A certain crystal shop was so packed with women I thought they might be hosting an event.
But below the surface—or simultaneously and interwoven—there is something more profound happening. I felt myself to be in the field of the goddess, in the grips of a vortex or matrix where different rules apply. I felt the necessity, yes the necessity, of surrender. It wasn’t a suggestion or a recommendation like you sometimes get in a yoga class, “let go…let go of all that does not serve.” It was more of a requirement. Within one hour of our arrival, I got a flat tire on the rental car while driving to the local grocery for dinner supplies. It was evening and the sun was low in the sky. I watched the darkness descend as I sat stranded on a remote country road without street signs or internet. Eventually, I was rescued by a family who lived nearby (thank you, Paul) and able to contact Ari. We spent the first night and half of the next day without a car, relying on our new friend for rides. Surrender.
Surrendering to the goddess is always a mindfuck. It feels so HARD until you actually do it and realize things are much easier on the other side. What’s “hard” is the clinging and controlling, the resistance to surrender. Ari and I were very much in this lesson in Glastonbury. It seemed to me everyone who was there was navigating some stage of their own journey towards surrendering more and more completely into the flow of life, the waters, the magic…I was able to be in it AND witness her precision, cleverness and wisdom as it was all unfolding. Everything was perfectly orchestrated to take us places WITHIN OURSELVES we had never gone…
Which is, at the end of the day, what all pilgrimages are actually about. We make the trip “externally” through time and space to access, honor, and bring to light a new place within ourselves. Glastonbury took us both into a deeper appreciation for and reverence for the divine feminine powers. The deeper I go…the deeper she gets.
This morning, before we left town, I took a walk on a country lane and gathered items for a goodbye mandala. The poem below came to me as I walked and worked. Many of the objects in the mandala make an appearance in the poem. I hope the magic of Glastonbury is transmitted to you through the words and this image. I hope the goddess is with you this Solstice evening.
🌹💦 Wild English Rose
Written while walking in Glastonbury on the Solstice
6.21.25
A gift for a worthy pilgrim—
Five feathers in a field
On summer solstice morning
Her memories are sealed
Passing through as visitor
To her ancestral abode
Petals fall, the lingering scent
Of a wild English rose
Drunk from the chalice well
Bathed in healing springs
Barefoot to the lady’s altar
Offerings she brings
Archetypal forces called
In all their mystical power
Melting mental constructs
The goddess in full flower
A match, a chance encounter
A multi-lifetime love
A family integration
Constellated from above
Likeness of a lion
Her lover’s patient plan
Coiled wildness waiting
For the moment to advance
Visit to a heavenly realm
Of opposites at play
Tempted by the sensual
remembering the way
Crow’s memory is long
And path of flight is straight
High above intoxication
And out the garden the gate
We cannot stay in Eden
And every ritual ends
Some lovers leave at daybreak
Some stay until the end
Spiral shells of snails
Spiral hands of time
She’s been here before
and will come again when wise
Last time a child, this time a queen
And next she’ll be a crone
Walking endless footpaths
With her lover to their home
For they have work to bring to life
Their story’s just begun
To quit the summer solstice
And return us to the One
~ * ~