Flame Offering
In the name of the three Brigits
I light the candle of my heart
May I offer it to everyone
gentle and steady
warm and bright
on its surface
skims her reflected
face
(no other mirror
desired)
no more the red blush
of well-washed severed
heads
by the healing waters
madness dampened
illness quenched
good winds called
drive fish and
fishermen to meet
she drinks the dear
water
cleans protects
tends
her whole life through
the holy well
Brigid at Avalon, a poem
by Hayley Arrington
She prayed to the Magdalene
At her Chapel near the Tor.
Bright Woman of no sin,
What is it you pray for?
Do you pray for the summer sun
To never dim or fade?
Do you pray for the faerie folk
Who run in the magic glade?
Goddess, Woman, Saint
Bright Woman of flame and well
Stir you cauldron, weave you spell
You were born on a threshold,
Neither in nor out.
You dried your cloak on a sunbeam.
You sang to the little trout.
You heal the ill,
Restore the blind’s sight,
Come to me at Brigid’s Hill.
Come, Goddess of the light.
Goddess, Woman, Saint
Bright Woman of flame and well
Stir you cauldron, weave you spell
Image: Saint Brigit milking her cow, Glastonbury. Uncredited.
These three poems are not published on this blog, but linked to the original site and to their videos on YouTube. From the Museum of Literature Ireland:
To celebrate St Brigid’s Day 2021, MoLI and the Department of Foreign Affairs, have collaborated on ‘Three Poems for Brigid’, a series of three short online films. Each film showcases a poet and a spoken word performer, and is based around one of the three aspects of Brigid as the triple goddess of poetry, healing, and craftwork.
The poems were commissioned from three of Ireland’s finest female poets, spanning the creative generations: Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Paula Meehan and Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe. Artists performing the works include Osaro Azams, Ruth McCabe and Caitríona Ennis, with music by Syn, Dowry, and Dreamcycles.
Through the poem and accompanying imagery, each film explores the theme as it relates to Irish women from past to present. The films aim to reach the widest audience possible, both local and international, and to engage Irish people around the world with living female Irish writers, performers and the feminine continuum that stretches through our history, is alive in our society, and is exemplified through both the Pagan and Christian symbolism of Brigid.
Old Biddy Talk
Poem by Paula Meehan
Performed by Ruth McCabe
Music by Dowry
i mbolc
Poem by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe
Performed by Caitríona Ennis
Music by Dreamcycles
Meeting
Bríd By Water
I looked across
and saw
a ribbon of silvered light
and the first
faint
blush of rose dawn.
This was Imbolc, the calling of Bríd
and She entered
on a pathway of sparkling
light.
I looked across
and my heart rejoiced
at the soft tread of her
across water.
Geraldine
Moorkens Byrne
Note: “Meeting Bríd By Water” is available with many other wondrous poems by Geraldine in her single author anthology, Dreams of Reality: a collection of poetry (e-book).
Image: "Berkshire, UK" by Paul Macallan on Unsplash
Brigit Wakens
frost clutches
the thorn
wrens huddle feathers puffed
deer stiff with cold
nip tips of
willow twigs
Brigit wakens
kicks her
feathered blanket from her legs
descends from her
bed to the frozen lake
a touch of her
palm
tames the water’s
tension
fingers melt its
rigid plane
stir the cold
broth mildly back and forth
sleepy trout rise
stipple-sided
from the muddy
bed in sloth
spring smooths
winter’s transfixed edges
urges green and
busy life
upon the land
Image: "Vartry Lake, Roundwood, Co Wicklow, Ireland," by Paddy O Sullivan on Unsplash
An
Offer to Brigid: for Imbolg
Goddess
of this festival,
for
whom a constant flame is tended,
daughter
of the Dagda, seen aslant
by
the Morrigan in the pocked
copper
of His cauldron,
we
need a word about
what’s
meant by ‘birth.’
We
have been reborn so many times,
laboured
through so many phases,
and
still this void, inside whose hearth
flames
crackle, spit and hiss,
inviting
family only so close.
Felt
dandelions bud inside us, but none
has
grown. How to navigate this?
What
is meant by terms such as ‘to term’
and
who may use them? Is it the compass
and
radar of the seed which carries it
or
the power of the wind around her?
Is
it the meat-hands of Market Street
which
bring children streaming into Spring
or
the long light-gone gestation of Winter?
If
you would turn your face
from
the table, anvil, furnace, all
the
various tools you’re forging –
blowing,
bending, sending sparks
up
into the workshop air –
and
answer us, we would prepare
offerings
from the bellies of our pantries:
honey,
herbs, corn bread, dollies.
We
have carried and come to terms.
Your misty-eyed, mystified daughters,
some
of us misidentified as sons.
Name
the way you wish us
in
our barrenness to engage with you,
knowing
not just any medium will do.
In
the name of circling pool and flame,
and
the bright bodies who birthed you.
Note:
Madelyn Burnhope is devoted to Brigid, as well as the Dagda and the
Morrigan, who revealed herself to her as Brigid’s mother, a UPG (unverified
personal gnosis) referenced in this poem.
Why I Tend Your Flame
why return always
to this endless
ritual
of nineteen days
plus one
(on the twentieth
day of the cycle
when each sister
has had her turn
you keep your
flame alive
(in the evening
of the following day
you offer me the
glowing coal
to kindle
my own small fire)
I am so forgetful
I strike the
match
and before the
wick is blackened
I am a thousand
miles away
planning worrying
angry wishful
hurrying to
accomplish this and that
if I am so very
forgetful
why return
in that moment
when I take a
breath
place the candle
in its lantern
lantern in its
cauldron
pour water clean
and fresh
around its base
when I add the
blue juniper
whisper words of
honouring
of sharing and of blessing
of request
when I open my
hands to receive
your eye-bright
coal
my heart opens
with them
I glimpse this
wider land
this wider life
come closer
for one fraction
of a second
awake
this is your gift
to me
mine to you
is to return
again and again
to this moment of
ignition
in my soul
