Day Twelve: A month of poetry for Brighid

Fionn on Samhain Eve

One long asleep
Is waking up.

Yet groggy with the dreams about my head
My slumber reaches out for me in bed.

I pull, like a fly in a web,
And as I struggle
Tug I on a silken string
Which wavers, ringing bright tones
Like Dadga’s Harp, whose playing
Brought sweet rest
To those who heard it sing.

Yet this is an illusion meant to trap,
For a spider waits to catch me in a nap;

To snare me with my own inaction
And kill me with its poison fangs,
For this is not kind Dagda’s melody
But the false lullaby
Played by the Burner of Tara,
And a spear tip is its only remedy.

Day Eleven: A month of poetry for Brighid

Fehu

Fundamental fire,
Elemental home,
Energetic essence,
One half of Creation.

Primal, wild, uncontrolled;
To hold it is to possess the soul
Of power and transformation.

It takes us into itself
Until we cease to be
What once we were.

We are destroyed
And in our place
Is light, heat, and ash.

It creates us, transforms, and destroys us.
Mobile power, held within, but moving out;
The agency and carrier of Will.

The strength of stampeding cattle,
Energy of the charge
In can sustain you through the winter
Or tear the world apart.

Beware the raw, unfettered potency,
For dangers lie in brightness
As in dark.

Do not forget:
That which feeds a fire
Is consumed by it.

Feed your fire
On what you can sustain,
Or devour yourself.

Day Ten: A month of poetry for Brighid

A Candle

The flame rolls like a coin between my fingers,
Fluttering, flickering in its dance
And yet the brightness of the flame still lingers
And holds me in a trance.

I stare into a bright void
And find it filling up with me.
Its tall hot thorn leaps up the more I look;
The more I look the more there is to see
And be enjoyed.

The spirit stands straight and tall,
A solemn soldier keeping nightly guard,
Or else a bright-eyed student burning hard
At both ends of his candle.

How is it that the coolest color burns the hottest?
Most-burning fire glows a watery blue,
Whose tinted blaze of old in azure hue
Signifies some supernatural guest.

You draw my gaze
And burn my eyes;
Fill my vision when my eyes are closed.

In a daze
To my surprise
I feel myself exposed.

Day Nine: A month of poetry for Brighid

It is true that I am posting this late. I assure that it was WRITTEN on the ninth, though.

Drum Circle

A harmony of rhythms
Beating, pounding, rapping, thrumming,
Permeates the circle round.

Euphony of percussion,
Meeting, bounding, tapping, drumming,
Creating a sea of sound.

The wavering vibrations
Heating, grounding, lapping, strumming,
Penetrate us and astound.

Day Eight: A month of poetry for Brighid

A Cold Desert’s Night

Five layers’ deep of blanket cover me,

An old arthritic hound dog at my side,

As faithful as Argus to Ulysses,

Against the cold of winter’s night we hide.

A squat cast-iron stove the only heat,

And that by burning stores of gathered wood,

It hopes to cold tyrannical to beat

And keep us warm as well a fire should.

The night gets in my veins and bids me rest.

In hibernation briefly I will be.

While drifting off to sleep in cotton nest

I hear the vast nocturnal symphony:

My heart drums out a baseline rhythm here,

The wailing wind takes up the melody,

I creaking harmony of timbers ear

While roving coyotes sing a rhapsody.

And so I sleep beneath a sea of stars,

Unbroken by men’s city walls and lights

Whose garishness the speckled nightscape mars,

And nestle I within the rocky heights,

Day Seven: A month of poetry for Brighid

Keep the Fire

Chorus:
Love and Laughter, pain and sorrow
Still we keep the fire
Through the night till it be morrow
Watch the flames burn higher.

Verse:
Out of darkness she is rising
Each day with a brighter flame
I cry out in exultation
In my Lady’s name.

::Chorus::

Over land and over water
She does cast her mantle bright
Bringing morning to each nation
Pushing back the night.

::Chorus::

Breo-saighit! Fiery Arrow!
Bhrati the exalted one!
In my blood and in my marrow
Feel I sparks of sun.

::Chorus::

With each falling of your hammer
My quintessence springs alive
Placed upon you anvil I will
Gleam if I survive.

::Chorus::

Lady Brighid please transform me,
I will never be the same;
In my head and heart be always
Your eternal flame.

::Chorus::

Day six: A month of poetry for Brighid

Leannan Sidhe

A red-haired gypsy dances through my mind,

A fleeting, spangled, salamander joy.

A spell upon my soul to her does bind,

To this my wandering woman, brash and coy.

Her hot skin bronzed by years in summer sun

Seems now as if some otherworldly site

Where earth forms not the very stuff of one

Were called her home and sparking of her light.

Her hair unfurls around her like a snake.

It wraps around the column of her spine

And floats above her head, a thing awake,

Of this fired-dancing fairy woman, mine.

She is some elemental Efrit djinn

Or else a wildfire catching hold,

Which spreads where blowing Zephyr throws his grin,

And flaunts her there, her going ever bold.

Her light throws shadows on the wall

Like ghosts in some Platonic cave.

Dim likenesses the others, all;

None satisfy that which I crave.

She turns the stuff of matter into art,

Transforms its ores to an ascendant state,

But yet you know she always will depart,

And leave you burned, still praying her to wait.

Such joy that brings such pain, my leannan sidhe!

Her breath of fire fills my lungs with heat,

Excites and scorches, spins me round, and she,

Unknowing, runs away on too fleet feet.

Her each move kindles fire in my breast!

I, captive to her eyes, am never free!

Her smile, the glowing iron, stabs my chest!

The sweetness of her laughter murders me.

Day Five: A month of poetry for Brighid

Scrying Pool

I speak the silence of my soul,
A language known to none but me.
I peer into the deepest hole
And see the darkness watching me.

And as I stare into the black
Twin stars out in the distance glow
Like eyes of fire staring back
From some strange mirror long ago.

My vision on the sky at night
I chart upon its astral map
The course of time in specks of light
And in the space that forms the gap.

I seek the secrets in your eyes;
The breadth of your extremity,
And with each one I realize:
All that I see in you is me.

Day Four: A month of poetry for Brighid

Visions of Otherworld
II

A slow-meandering breeze rolls past my face
To rustle in my ears a traveling tune.
It sings to me the thrill of letting go
And following where intuition leads

I ponder for a moment what it means
In slow and carefully examined thought.
Its argument exotic presses me
To ascertain how much its worth, or not.

So lost I ruminations stand I there
My legs grow root-like, buried in the ground.
No image moves me while I question it,
No progress made debating what is sound.

The wheat does wave me onward with the wind.
I protest “I do not know; is it safe?”
“You must make risks to learn, must fall to rise,
Or else become a tree, and then a stone.”

I have not time to contemplate the words
For only do they drum upon my ear
When emptying his cheeks upon my back
The Wind does blow me forward off my feet.

So stumbling I throw out my hands and feet
To try and catch myself a hold on ground,
But tumbling ‘spite my efforts I do greet
The earth and roll, world-whirling, from the mound.

My sight still spinning, swirling from the fall,
On stomach sprawled I raise my rumpled gaze
Upon a stately, cloven, blackened hoof
Whose slender sinews stretch toward the sky.

As quickly as appearing it is gone,
Vanished amid the golden stalks of wheat.
Blind instinct urges me to follow on
And swiftly gains firm ground beneath my feet.

I cut through clinking oceans of tall gold,
The shafts of growing metal scratch my cheeks.
A pair of twisted antlers I behold
And try if I can see which way it seeks.

In fixed pursuit my hot feet pound the earth
Till ground gives way beneath my sprinting frame
And into earth I plummet past my waist
And find myself in grubbing rabbit’s hame.

The figure looks at me with knowing eyes,
Full human in their shape and countenance,
No aid they offer, nor no obstacle;
They wink and vanish in the waving wheat.

Already twice I’ve fallen in this land,
And from all paths my chase diverted me.
Now I must lift me up with my two hands,
And find my way through shining lands of sidhe.

Day Three: A month of poetry for Brighid

Visions of Otherworld

I

I tread the rough path ‘twixt two hillocks green.

The air is thick with mist which hangs in sheets

Obscuring vision of the road ahead.

The moisture saturates my every breath

And coats the grass and skin and cloth with dew.

My road leads to twin monoliths of stone

That flank the threshold of another land

Through which my path if e’er I follow leads.

Each menhir a rough pillar of grey rock

Bearing runic symbols of safe passage

Deep notched in channels on each carraig’s face.

Blind to beyond, but trusting in my road

That never once has yet misled my feet

I overstep the boundary of the rocks,

Whose man or elf-marked runes invite me hence,

And pass beyond the portal ‘tween the hills

Into what land as yet remains unseen.

Now is the fog from o’er my eyes removed

And with true vision look I on the land

That stretcheth out before my thoughtful feet.

Below the hillside whereupon I scan,

Behold! A field of gleaming grains of gold;

A flaxen swath of gilded wheat and rye!

Farther thence a sapphire rivulet

Cuts its trickle through that shining land.

Beyond, a forest most majestical

Rises in green pines and hazel trees,

Whose branches overreach the quiet stream,

And trunks the height of which do scratch the sky.

What lessons here be taught I do not know,

But I will walk this world of shining lights,

Of precious metal grains and gemstone leaves,

Of colors strong and trees of soaring heights,

And glean what secrets it presenteth me,

What truths unfathomable it will show.

Day Two: A month of poetry for Brighid

Seeking Imbas

Against the cold I lay in bed awake

A mantle of darkness hanging over me

In emulation of old Eire’s filidh

Sequestered in a stone sarcophagus

Where waiting for a fire in the head

They’d sit and soak in water to the nose.

A boy steps in, his cheeks still round with youth.

His heart of passion holds his fire there,

Interred in two-fold dwelling of the dead.

A wrinkled man steps out, his trials carved

Into the features of his face and hands.

Inside and out transformed, still full of flame.

The fire in his eyes bespeaks the new song of his soul;

A song that will define him as a man,

And more than just a man; a man of art.

His own, no other’s, gifted from the gods—

A flame that burns in water, spreading forth

To fill up all his being, every vein,

Dwelling in body, mind, and his spirit;

That head which is the chamber of the soul.

His lines will fade and make him new again,

To be a man with his whole life laid out,

To do with and to make of what he can

Until his wrinkles find him once again

And mark him as a man who has known life.

It is this transformation that I seek,

But lacking a sarcophagus of stone

Or any means to soak until such time

As difficulty, hunger, and the strain

Bring on such visions and stir up such fire

That poetry streams from my fevered brain

And I return from past that land of death;

Until such time as I can do such deeds

I do my best to follow in their wake;

In dark of night, enclosed in my own space,

In semblance of sarcophagi I lay

As sleep draws near, I fill with images

And ride my inspiration into dreams.

Day One: A month of poetry for Brighid

The First Offering

I’ve writ iambic meters and rough prose,

Used metaphors, alliteration, rhyme,

Made swaths of formless dialogue and speech

And now I seek to pin one word to another

But words cramp up and muddle, sluggishly.

They clump like sludge and flow not readily,

Or else come out in stutters, tripping on the threshold of my mind.

Time and again I put my pen to page.

Time and again I wrestle with my mind.

Each thing I write reminds me of another,

Or clouds me with a haze of recollection

So that each phrase rings hollow—overdone,

But I have pledged myself to honor you

Each day this month with words that are my own,

And so I offer such words as I have

To please you in what measure that I can.