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.