“Brighid Dreams the Poet” by Erynn Rowan Laurie

Brighid Dreams the Poet

 by Erynn Rowan Laurie 

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.”