At the recent winter solstice, I heard Damh the Bard's wonderful Colloquy of the Oak and Holly Kings for the first time. While some think of the changing of the light or of the seasons as a battle between warmth and cold or dark and light, I love how his poem acknowledges the process of gradual change. At every point in the wheel of the year which we mark as important, I see it more as a day to pause and take note of the changes that are ongoing, or a day to take heart, knowing that they will occur. Winter and spring need not always be seen as enemies. They are also partners, who each have their part in turning the wheel. This poem came to me at Imbolc two years ago. I hope you enjoy it!
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The Cailleach Becomes Bride
Bleak. Cold and silence. Iron hard ground The roiling sea that blasts the cliffs under a sky of nothingness The frosted stone the frozen grass useless for fodder under the feet of tired and haggard sheep They say I am wise with the wisdom perhaps of the migration of reindeer who scrape the moss the runes of twigs the raven who finds her morsel and the lynx who waits it out |
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But I can yet dance
Climb the trees
laugh
and raise a wind
to throw last years leaves
into a dervish circle
I can tease a gentler climate
up the valley
to moisten the loins
bring thoughts of some lustier dame
Only to tumble you
onto the ice
What were we thinking!
I cackle again from the treetops
raising a storm that sends the cattle
lowing and bucking in indignation
from sleet like knives
to the shelter of the dyke
The ponies
lower their heads to the ground
tails plastered to their legs
I will jig and reel down the beach
entangled in seaweed
Enraged
I will blast your windows
and tear your thatch
You must regard me!
I will rip your hat off
slap your face
and make you look at death squarely
We must discuss this
however briefly
Climb the trees
laugh
and raise a wind
to throw last years leaves
into a dervish circle
I can tease a gentler climate
up the valley
to moisten the loins
bring thoughts of some lustier dame
Only to tumble you
onto the ice
What were we thinking!
I cackle again from the treetops
raising a storm that sends the cattle
lowing and bucking in indignation
from sleet like knives
to the shelter of the dyke
The ponies
lower their heads to the ground
tails plastered to their legs
I will jig and reel down the beach
entangled in seaweed
Enraged
I will blast your windows
and tear your thatch
You must regard me!
I will rip your hat off
slap your face
and make you look at death squarely
We must discuss this
however briefly
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Snow
soft and moist as the blanket of a newborn Quietly coddling the first snowdrops the brightness of a candle Like a maiden with the gentle blandness of purity Yet knowing She dances under the peaceful painted snow the dance of the quickening seed The crocus flung up purple like trying Mother's hat discarded in the naked dance of further flurries and the Cailleach's blood running in her veins like the burn in spate Dancing mad as a hare across the lawn like a tumble of kittens that run spraddle legged on their first jaunts or the wonder of lambs put to pasture flinging out a highland leg Increasing now in quiet knowing in the naming of each flower in its successive season their buds waiting in her small womb where the Cailleach nestles against her backbone Dreaming - Kris Hughes 2011 |
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Poems for the Season of Imbolc
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"Some of the most amazing pagan poetry I’ve ever been blessed to encounter." -
- Sharon Paice MacLeod, author of Celtic Cosmology and the Otherworld, and The Divine Feminine in Ancient Europe At Imbolc, Brigid, the goddess of poetic inspiration, walks the land. These poems were composed over many years, and under the influence of different folkloric ideas – particularly that of the juxtaposition of Brigid and the Cailleach. |
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