"To Brighid of despair” by Jenne Micale

 

To Brighid of despair 

 

She is there for you, beloved, in the warmth

of fire, in the strong walls warding off the chill,

in the softness of bread against your lips.

It doesn’t matter if you believe, if

you can feel her hand against your back.

The candle drives back the shadow: belief

is not required, only wax and a spark.

You press palms against your eyes and look for signs

You press palms against your ears and listen

for a word and nothing trickles through the shell

that encases you, an accretion of grief.

You say there are no signs, there are no words

and nothing shining that can possibly

touch you, and those conversations you once

delighted in the false lake that appears

in the sand on parched days, that guiding hand

only the cruel illusion offered to

the lonely staggering in the desert

that only the senses can measure truth,

and the truth they measure only despair.

She knows this story, she remembers when

Ruadán lay crumpled at her feet, a spear

cast through, her head thrown back and a wailing

that cracked even the hardest stone. Eyes closed

and ears deafened to everything but the hole

gobbling the very dimensions of his

familiar shape, only a silence there

that swallowed every prayer. And so she knows

you can’t hear her now, feel her hand in your hair,

that your eyes cannot see the signs she sends:

yellow asters burning by the highway,

the dawn wind subtly humming your gold name.

So friend, don’t look for her there, not quite yet.

She is the fire and the furnace, the light

dancing in the bulb, the warmth of your flesh.

Start with light and heat: those others will come

for every swan must first peck through that shell

driven by the warmth of their mother’s long

sitting, every seed must first break

after weathering by winter and wind

until the light sparks that very first leaf

and once again you feel her rushing in

Image: "Despair 1" painting by Lette Valeska, 1954. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.