an offering to Brigid

Over twenty some years ago I was part of planning a Reclaiming public ritual for Brigid, Goddess of Poetry, Smithcraft, and Healing. It was Imbolc, or Candlemas, what most Americans know of as Groundhog day, that place on the wheel where you tune in to the first signs of spring. As part of the ritual, we decided to have each member of the community make a pledge for the coming year. Little did I know at the time that this would become a steadfast annual tradition, that these pledges would mold and shape my experience within the spiral of the persistent seasons.

This past year was shaped by my pledge to learn the difference between what was dead and what was alive, and to give my energy and heart to what was living. Oh! What a pledge that has turned out to be! After sharing a dinner and a movie together last night, I kissed goodnight the lover who I was so earnestly trying to accept was dead to me a year ago, savoring the constant hellos and goodbyes of living things, and the shifts that can happen in one short long year. I hoped to wake up this morning to a new pledge, but one has not come yet. It will, I'm sure of that.


There's been so many poems I've wanted to post today. I've had a pot of bulbs growing in my living room. Waking up this morning, and looking at the brilliant red tulips that have just bloomed, I realized it had to be this one, one which hasn't even been in the running, perhaps because it has been such a constant for me, and I've already read it or sent it out to all those close to me, jeez, I've probably even posted it before on this blog. Nevertheless, the red tulips demand that it claim it's place here today, the cry of a mystic grounded in love and desire of this world. So, sweet Brigid, I offer you up this poem...with much thanks to one of the great loves of my lifetime, Reya, for yet another of her brilliant ideas, an idea that I know is already a tradtion that will mark the coming years, enriching this wild ride thru the seasons...thank you goldpoppy.blogspot.com.....this is magic.

For Desire

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the love who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are left off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look

Kim Addonizio