Silent Poetry Reading

In accordance with Reya's call for poetry for Brigid -- we're to read this all silently, though I might be noisy just for the hell of it -- we will now have poetry.

First, a chant to call Brigid as Goddess of Poetry, which I wrote in the long ago when I was still in San Francisco and which never, never got picked up on. It's just too damn hard to sing, alas, so it never went into the Reclaiming repertoire. But I still sing it, cause I like it:

Song shifter, story changer,
Shape, take our song.
Dream through the pulse.
Sing through the bone.

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And second, an actual poem:



Hecate

She keeps her clothes on at the gate:
she's that sort of girl.
Double-torched, though, two-fisted
light, walking the dark.
All that furniture looming
around, cornered, broken:
good to have a couple of lights.
More would be better, but
she's got two hands, and
they're full. The moon's not, though --
dark as toads -- and now she's
gone.

Gone. You're too slow.
Hurry, following past the
lovers, the rosaries, that lost
baby; the light flits off
the walls, the room darkens.
You're groping through the rubbish alone.

Always so. She'll open the door,
she'll lead you in, but she's
not there for the cleanup.
She's down at the corner,
eating all the honey cakes.
You're stuck with the boxes,
waiting for the van.

---Anne Brannen
September 05