Poetry for Brighid’s Day

Maiden Moon poem

Welcome to all poets and lovers of poetry! In honor of Celtic Brighid’s Day, here is a haiku, a time-honored Japanese poetic form that uses 17 syllables in a rhythm of 5, 7, 5.

unmasking winter
holding bright clouds in her bowl
swelling maiden moon

I wrote and lettered this in 2000 for Imbolc. The moon last night was a little more full than that year’s crescent, but the waxing crescent resting on her side still seems like a bowl to me.

If haiku is an example of compressed language, here is another which is much longer, but harks back to the tradition of sung poetry. The poet, Drew Dellinger, speaks his poem so beautifully; I am glad to find a video of his performance. I first saw and heard this poem on a DVD of a concert, Praises for the World, which was a gathering of poetry, song, dance and love for the earth arranged by Jennifer Berezan and performed in Oakland in 2003. I still weep every time I watch this concert. Here is Drew sharing his poem, Hymn to the Sacred Body of the Universe. The partial text of this poem, and many others, is on his website.

Feel free to post your own poems in my comments section if you like. Other poems can be found by following some of the links at right; also try here. Be sure and check out the comments sections, which have more links. This is how we weave the web.

{ 3 comments… add one }
  • Cari 02/02/2009, 9:09 pm

    Oh, nice poems, Katy, thank you for posting them!

  • Sue Simpson 02/02/2009, 10:49 pm

    Hi Cari,Beautiful Haiku….and that video? WOW! will have to watch it a few times, would love to do the words as a special piece for myself.I’ve added my poems at http://www.the-creative-spirit.blogspot.comWith love and brightest blessings for the Imbolc season,from a very snowy but beautiful North yorkshire xxx

  • katy grischy 02/02/2009, 8:47 pm

    Praise What Comes
    surprising as unplanned kisses,
    all you haven’t deserved
    of days and solitude.
    Your body’s immoderate good health
    that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise
    talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
    that are your food and your hunger, nightfall and walk
    before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps
    you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
    you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
    and only a few very simple questions:
    did I love, finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
    of the many names of God? At the intersections,
    the boundaries where one life began and another
    ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
    possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
    did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?
    -Jeanne LohmannCodicil

    That man,who accepted the stolen TV with a wink,
    will run into a burning mobile home next spring
    to rescue an old woman.The woman in the Volvo,
    weaving in traffic
    while furtively talking on her cell phone,
    peels 20 pounds of potatoes each Friday evening
    to take home fries to the shelter
    every Saturday morning.And even I,
    who was so rude to the clerk this morning,
    have been known
    to bring flowers
    to the bereaved.
    -Ellen Skagerberg

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