The Old Grove of Veloria (Madrigal)

“The Old Grove of Veloria” is probably an amalgam of more things that have stayed with me over the years than almost anything else I’ve written. There is some John Dowland in it—the melancholy, the old-world gravity, the sense that beauty and sadness can occupy the same space. There is also something of Robin Williamson and that strange, half-mythic British folk imagination; Pierre Bensusan’s fluid acoustic world is somewhere in the background too. And then there are older memories such as The Magic Garden, where trees, names, places, and imagination could all seem to belong to one slightly enchanted reality. The piece also draws on the older bardic tradition of giving trees almost human identities and spiritual weight. The Welsh tale commonly known as “The Battle of the Trees” has fascinated many writers and musicians over the years; even Rush drew from that tradition to evoke similar images of a living, symbolic woodland world. Veloria belongs to that same imaginative territory for me—not as a retelling of any one source, but as a place assembled from many old impressions. I wanted the grove to feel inhabited without ever fully explaining by what. The trees have names and personalities, but they are not simply characters. They seem to remember things, conceal things, perhaps understand things that the narrator cannot. That is why one of the central passages means so much to me: “Is it for joy?” I asked the leaves. “Or for what we have lost and cannot name?” The grove gave no answer, for some things, even trees will not say. That is really the heart of the piece. Veloria is less about solving a mystery than about standing quietly inside one. Lyrics: In the old grove of Veloria, where light falls soft as kiss, there stood trees with names older than sorrow. There was Lady Threnwillow, whose branches wept in fair weather, and Ser Caledorn Oak, broad of heart and keeper of patient silence. Nearby grew the pale Aurelian Birch, whose bark caught the sun like whispered promises, and winding through them all, the soft-vined Melisthorn, forever reaching, never holding. I came to that grove as one summoned, though no voice had called. “Be fair to me,” I said—not to the sky, nor to the earth, but to the grove itself, for it listens in ways no person ever does, and answers in ways no person quite hears. The sun warmed the nettled air, and the wind stirred the long grasses into quiet confession, though what they told was never quite the same twice. Behind me, I felt a presence—yours, or something that had once been yours. Yet when I turned, only the trees stood, shifting gently as if hiding a truth, or hiding the hiding of it. Lady Threnwillow lowered her silver leaves, brushing my shoulder like a sorrow remembered, or remembered wrong, which is much the same. “You stand behind,” I whispered, “but are you near?” No answer came—only the faint tremble of branches that seemed to hold their breath. At the roots of Caledorn Oak, I found it: a small bouquet, bound in twine of Melisthorn vine. Simple. Deliberate. Unexplained— and so it seemed to say the most. Aurelian Birch shimmered faintly in the light, as though urging me to understand, but the meaning would not settle, and would not stay still long enough to be held. Was it love, offered in quiet? Or regret, wrapped gently so it would not wound too sharply? Or something else entirely— a feeling that had once been whole, but slipped like water through unclosed hands. Above, in the high reaches of the grove, the birds began their song. But here, beneath these ancient names, the song felt wrong. Not false—no, never false— but uncertain, like a joy that lost its footing, or a mourning that forgot its cause. Lady Threnwillow wept a little more. Melisthorn curled tighter around nothing at all, and held it fast. “Is it for joy?” I asked the leaves. “Or for what we have lost and cannot name?” The grove gave no answer, for some things, even trees will not say. So I remained beneath them. The wind moved through Veloria, carrying your name in fragments— not spoken, but suggested, like a memory that will not fade cleanly. My heart grew quiet, as though Caledorn Oak had taken it into his keeping. My eyes dimmed, as though Threnwillow had lent me her grief. And there, beneath the old and knowing trees, I lay down. Sleep came like moss over stone—soft, inevitable. And in that dreaming place, beyond root and branch, I saw you walking. Not alone.