The Arrow

I slip a hand into my witches bag,

and to my surprise, draw out an arrow.

What to do with this?

I have no bow.

I do not hunt.

A single arrow could point me in a direction, but would it be the right one? Can I be my own compass?

Targets abound.

I have no bow.

I do not hunt.

“Do you shoot?”

“Yes. Very well, as it happens:”

A woman wiser than most wrote of the arrow, through the voice of her brilliant archer,

“one of my vanities, you see. It’s handsome to watch, and satisfying to perform, it’s convivial and competitive and artistic and absorbing. Poets love it: they rush home to unpick all their quills and write odes with them.”

A teacher wiser than many, waved an arrow past my inner lights just some days ago.

He brought back to me much of what I had given away, spent, had stolen from me, and whatever seeps out when I am lost in no-thought and not protecting myself.

He was hooking it back.

With an arrow.

But you cannot protect yourself with one arrow.

A teacher can do many things, anything,

but I cannot protect myself with one arrow.

I look more closely at the feathers,

the fletchings are dark and I feel I have seen them before.

Maybe this is no arrow but a message stick?

It is not an easy message to read,

this is subtle,

the green sheen on the fletchings.

So I carry it,

sleep with it under my pillow,

sit in meditation with it lying across my knees.

Until one day -

I know what I have to do.

I place it back in the bag.

What a story I wrote for myself,

how attached I was to an answer,

a message,

a call to arms,

a puzzle to solve,

my place at the centre of things.

It was just something I found in a bag.

13/2/23