Tonight the old trees lean closer. You can hear them in the dark line of forest, oak & pine creaking softly like elders shifting in their seats before the ceremony begins. They have watched us for centuries, watched lovers carve promises into bark, watched children crowned in daisies run laughing through spring fields, watched empires rise loud & leave quietly while roots kept drinking from the same patient earth. Tonight they stand around us again, green-robed & ancient, their branches lifted as though blessing this small human fire built in honor of a far greater one.
Above them, the crows arrive first. Black-winged priests of memory, keepers of secrets hidden in thorn hedges, they gather in the high branches and call to one another in voices rough as old spells.
They know this night. They knew it when our ancestors lit hilltop flames to bless cattle and crops, to leap through smoke for luck, to call fertility back to the sleeping soil. They knew it when the May Queen danced barefoot in dew, when the Green Man rose laughing from leaf and vine and wild abandon. They know it still.
Look how the flames reach upward now, gold tongues licking at the dark, sparks lifting like prayers too wild to remain earthbound. Bring to this fire what winter left heavy in your bones. Bring your grief. Bring your fear. Bring the names of those you miss. Bring the dreams you nearly buried beneath practical things. Feed them to the flames.
And when the fire answers with warmth against your skin, with light against your face, remember this: you were never made to live half-alive.
You are meant to bloom loudly, to love with reckless courage, to create, to heal, to begin again. The trees know this. The crows cry it from the branches. Even the stars lean low enough to listen.
Tonight we honor the turning wheel. Tonight we choose life. Tonight we bless the earth that holds us. And when dawn comes, may we leave this circle carrying fire within us, bright enough to warm the lost, bright enough to light our own path home.