Brighid Dreams the Poet
I want a poet
with words of honey
and bitter dregs
of red Hungarian wine
dressed in the bones of birds
with wild
ecstatic eyes
and feet that dance the bonfire's rim
I want a poet
with many souls
souls of mice
and tigers
souls of ravenous
hungry ghosts
and the singing souls of rivers
of wallowing, bellowing buffalo
souls of moths, and geckos
I want a poet
with eyes of crystal shards
that see through flesh
and spy the
hearts of trees
and mountains' bones
with thin, strong fingers
to pluck the hawthorns' bloom
in Beltain's dawning dews
I want a poet
with ballads for breath
and chants
to scatter fear from the deeps of night
or call the wren
from her nest
with spells to lay children to sleep
and bind the rising moon
I want a poet
with fur and claws
and hot, panting tongue
thirsty
and seeking the spring
Erynn's book of poetry, Fireflies at Absolute Zero, is available from Hiraeth Press. It won the won the Bisexual Book Award for Poetry in 2013.
“Fireflies at Absolute Zero is
a map of a life, written in location and longing, its calligraphy the
surreal moments between dream and waking. The poems are shaped by myth, the
Gaelic poetic tradition, dream worlds, personal history, and the grey-green landscape of the Salish Sea. From snowfall in the Hoh rainforest to the sensuality of
a lover’s touch, the poems span decades of a life in motion, finally
finding a home between the mountains and waters of the Pacific Northwest.”
