Allotment Snowdrops on St Brigid’s Day
Something a little different for this blog… I have always been a person who likes facts, and this is represented in my writing, but I do tend to the ‘flowery prose’ side of things as well, although I feel hesitant about sharing this side of my writing, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, as the saying goes, so for this week’s blog post I am sharing a poem I wrote on 1st February, St Brigid’s Day, inspired by an online gathering held by the Resurgence Trust.
The Resurgence Trust (https://www.resurgence.org/) is an educational charity that publishes Resurgence & Ecologist magazine and runs a series of events; some of these are Earth Festivals, celebrating the changing seasons represented by the four fire festivals, Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain, and the two solstices and two equinoxes. These one-hour online meetings are gentle, nurturing spaces where people come together to share in meditation, spiritual growth and learning, and are led by Georgie Gilmore. I am not a particularly spiritual person, but I am moved by the meetings and, during the longer meditation for the Imbolc Earth Festival on 31st January 2023, a line of alliterative text sprang into my mind that I had to write down. Revisiting it the next day, another alliterative line sprang to life and before I knew it I had written a poem, Celebrating St Brigid’s Day, reproduced below and also shared on the Earth Festival group’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/resurgenceearthfestivals).
St Brigid is the goddess of fire and fertility, hearth, home and healing. She represents the movement from winter to spring, from dark to light, and offers hope for the coming of brighter days. It was the custom to make a straw cross for St Brigid’s Day or leave a ribbon on the windowsill – both images are contained within my poem, and the lighting of a fire to celebrate her and the coming of spring. Well dressing also took place, as Brigid was associated with water and flow, including the flow of creativity, so it is very fitting that the beginning of this poem came to me during a meditation focusing on the stirrings of the season of growth and honouring her spirit.
Celebrating St Brigid’s Day
The seeds that lie hidden in the sodden soil beneath my searching footsteps
Are stirring, stimulated by the light from the now less distant sun.
Blossoming blackthorn branches block my path but I brush through, undeterred,
Bound towards the bund and the breezy hilltop beyond to celebrate St Brigid.
For tonight is the fire festival of Imbolc – greeting spring with a fierce lick of the sky.
On the firmament below, figures rise and fall around the flickering flames
Communing with the coming of the growing season, when courting is considered,
And curly-coated, gravid ewes are called in to be counted.
Day gives way to night, then night to day and the dawn chorus delights.
We deliver the goddess her dues: dress her holy well and leave her drink.
Oh, radiant St Brigid. Bless the red ribbon left on the window’s ridged ledge
And the rough cross woven from rushes to venerate you.
Preside patiently over the people and your poets, O powerful protector.
We have a profound need for a patroness in these perilous times.