"Hearth Shrine” by Jenne Micale

O Hearth Mother, the tiny light on your shrine

dances and holds. You teach me: one candle

can dispel the darkness, a brightening

circle your gift and delight. With two you can

see where you’re headed and what you’ve become.

With four, the corners of the room are made

visible. With thousands of small flames

held in the heart, we can topple governments.

You teach me: with wind and kindling, we can

fashion a forge and remake everything.

It is our breath that purses the wind, our hands

gathering sticks and saplings, laying the wood.

The Hearth Mother is the Mother of Judgments.

She says, I will show you: your hand strikes the match —

Image:  "red green and blue candles” by Elena Kloppenburg on Unsplash.

"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.

“Brighid of the dandelion” by Jenne Micale

 

Brighid of the dandelion

 

You are in the dandelion, the gold

of the summer your bright eye, its edged lace

your mantle winter white in the grass, each

sailing on the wind to root in new ground.

After frost they still reached out to bloom, burning

in dim Samhaintide up until the snow

where under that blank mantle they abide

until the first fetching thaw. Roots reach deep

and ensure their return, the same as thought,

as a smoored flame slumbering in heaps of

snowy ash until the wind of a word

stirs it, a willing hand readies a twig

and so brings back day’s flame, the saving heat.

You cannot be eradicated, fire-eye

and pale foot, the heat of thought melting the ice

Image: "Dandelion" by Jill Burrow from Pexels

Acknowledgement: By permission. This poem first appeared in Brigid's Light: Tending the Ancestral Flame of the Beloved Celtic Goddess, March 1, 2022 by Cairelle Crow and Laura Louella , editors. 

“Prayer to Brighid, the Peace Bride” by Jenne Micale

Prayer to Brighid, the Peace Bride

O Peace Bride, Beloved of Bres,

you gave your hand to heal warring kin

for what is home without peace? Mourning

mother, inventor of keening, you who

count the cost when families fight: Guide me

through my trials with a diplomat’s grace.

Peace-weaver, let me be the balm of

warring hearts. Let our passions be the hearth

of sanctuary, not the blaze of hate.

Let me strive always to speak with peace

and steady the hand before it reaches

for the blade. Let me be vulnerable

to our shared disappointments, our shames

and our histories, and from them always

weave peace from the broken threads of the world

Image: "Woman weaving in Peru" by Tydence Davis from Las Vegas. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.