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.