The Final Verse

When the poet returns to the stars

“Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us.” ~ Sappho

Dear Reader,

Naturally, none of us know how old we’ll be when we reach our final verse, but like many, I hope mine arrives gently – like the last note of a song dissolving into silence. I’ve written this story as a keepsake in my sixties to help me remember the journey that’s shaped me thus far.

This might just be the final story in my mosaic memoir, the one that gathers all others. And now that its layered shape has fully emerged, more poems and haiku call to be written alongside each story. These fragments of my life – broken yet luminous – remain everlasting.

The Final Verse

I rise early. Warm air suffuses the garden with light, caressing each flower with kindness. I take my tea outside, steam curling in the hush of morning. A solitary bee drifts past, tracing golden lines through the air, her legs already heavy with pollen. There’s no rush, no longing – only presence.

I close my eyes and listen, as I have done my whole life – waiting, breathing, belonging. In the distance, Mother Sea murmurs, whispering against the shore. Trees beyond the fence stretch, their roots deep and unshaken – sentinels of time, unmoved by the wind. Birds begin their quiet conversations, part of a song much older than words, singing as if they know.

I know, too.

All my years have carried me here – not to this garden, but to this way of being.

I sit in the shade of an old willow tree, its roots twisting deep like memories – ancient, grounded. Pressing my palm against its trunk, I feel the quiet imprint of time. There’s no need to close my eyes to remember – it’s all here, folded inside me.

How I’ve walked through fire, risen as Eaglespirit, carried Oakheart’s strength and followed Riversong’s melody – each step moving me from darkness into light. I didn’t break; I became. With each wound, secret and longing transforming themselves into poetry, shaping the story I would leave behind.

The path was never straight. I fought my way through tangled forests, swam through dark waters, sat beside trees and stones that listened when no one else could. I was unseen, misunderstood, unmoored – but never lost for words. For even in silence they still found me.

The darkness of my life didn’t steal from me – it wrote me. Silence was never emptiness – it was always a space filled with things waiting to arrive.

Avebury. The hang drum. The moment I became the poem. The whisper of wind carrying those verses that I didn’t write but somehow had always known. Poetry was not something I created – it was something waiting to be found on the inside.

I gently nod to myself, remembering that long road of healing I walked. Thirty years as a psychotherapist – listening, holding, guiding. Healing others, healing myself. I was the Wounded Healer, the fractured mirror, the woman carrying secrets and shamanic gifts, unsure which would weigh heavier. Jung whispered in my ear about how to become whole. So I followed him and never looked back.

At forty, true love arrived. She was everything I didn’t know I was looking for – calm where I had been storm, steady where I had been trembling. We built a life together – our next life, as it happens – a quiet healing sanctuary, a lighthouse beside the sea. Created with shared love, light and laughter.

At fifty, my first book was released into the world, followed by three more. My mosaic memoir came much later, when it was ready – layered with stories, poems, haiku. With words now etched into printed pages and held in hands that weren’t mine – I was no longer afraid to be read, to be seen by others.

And here, in this quiet morning, I find myself sitting with the softest heart I have ever known. Not perfect. Not without ache. But whole. Wise in ways I never expected. Holding space for tides that move within and without. Holding space for the Maiden who was so afraid, the Mother who searched for her deepest self and the Crone who’s telling this story.

Still standing, still loving - a stargazer of the soul, a poet who has carried depth. She who has held secrets. She who has honoured the archetypal Green Witch.

The past no longer calls me back. It hums gently – woven into the hush between heartbeats, whispered in the sigh of trees, whirling in the dance of wind. I smile at how Mother Moon has pulled at my tides, casting Her quiet glow every dusk, and how Father Sun has carried me through each dawn – both whispering the truth of cycles: that nothing is truly lost, only transformed.

And then, in the warmth of morning, I feel it – something shifting, loosening its hold.

I’m dying – not suddenly, not in fear, but in quiet recognition as memories rise like shifting seasons.

The Wheel turns again. I have walked through Imbolc’s hope, Beltane’s fire, Samhain’s shadow. And now, as the year folds inward, I step into the final season – the quiet return, the knowing that all things come back in time.

I take another sip of tea. The warmth lingers.

I smile as a familiar hum reaches me – soft, steady, golden. I notice the bee returning, retracing her path as I have, following those unseen rhythms, carrying the pollen of what remains.

I’m not leaving – I am becoming. I carry it inside me, woven into my words, my hands, the pause between footsteps.

I’ve been a Starseed on a journey, a twin flame, a poet who became the poem. I’ve honoured Inanna in descent, listened to Odin’s whisper, felt the hand of Isis guiding me home. I’ve known love and fear in all Her guises.

We’re all stories I tell myself – written in tides, in wind, in the stillness between breaths. No chapter of our lives is ever wasted, no verse ever gets erased. Even those hardest moments are all part of our song.

I close my eyes, let myself drift.

There is no pain. No sorrow. Only warmth. Only rhythm.

I hear it then – the chorus rising, a song from the earth that carries me beyond time, beyond identity, beyond breath itself. I dissolve into the Symphony of the Soul of Love – into the dance of archetypes, into the myths that shaped me, the goddesses and gods who have always walked beside me.

"Oh, Great Mother, marry me – take me to your family."

I’m returning to the stars – to the place where poetry is born, to the hush between words and worlds, to the love that holds everything.

I am home – held in stars, in silence, in light.

✨

The story does not end here. It only turns the page.

For if you listen closely, you may hear it too – the hum of words calling us back to the beginning, waiting to be found again.

✨

Yours in words, Deborah

If my words strike a chord and you feel inspired to dive deeper into my poetry or explore my essays on Jungian thought, I invite you to visit: The Liberated Sheep