hazel
poem 008
i. when Cailleach is crooning, tending the last hearth-fires this dark season, collecting the final winter-bones is when Brigid lifts the light with her song, the dawning buds of wild plum & black haw swelling with her voice is when the vultures are creating a clutch of brown-speckled eggs is when i see them dangling there: these sun-pierced yellow braids are offering swirls of seed-birthing smoke they are elongating, gushing into the giving of themselves to the first warm winds & nearby yearning yet never leaving the hedge-limbs are these threshold tongues: tiny, magenta, often very still now lapping loudly at the whispers of golden breath ii. all of this spills into & inspires my body before i can reason it out: my pruning saw is sap-licked & i have gathered a strong hazel rod one that feels like the muscles of a wood spirit who in a time away from now will be adorned with stories & smoke, a strip of leather with a single vulture’s feather here though they remain fresh & we begin to walk: my two steps to their one of course i do not know where we are going i only know that the wood spirit pounds the earth as we go with two steps thud densely heavily with that muscle i felt like a heart with four steps thud, thud a song a path a compass with six steps thud, thud, thud a pattern an earth listening with ears all over their body with eight steps thud, thud thud, thud an earth a wood spirit & me softening into one delicious heartbeat



Beautiful words and rhythm