Brigid Poetry

AVE MATERS
after The Hail Mary


Hail all mothers
graceful or not
God or goddess is with you, believe it or not


Blessed are all women
blessed are the fruits of our wombs
whatever names, ridiculous or not, we choose for them
and even when they're acting rotten.


O mothers
holy human mothers
all our children are divine


Long after they leave us
they will curse us and pray to us
now and in the hour
of our death
now and in the hour of their need.

Elizabeth Cunningham



Grass

Grass is an ancient ancestor.
If you would bless a child, say:
"May this child have the strength
Of grass."
"May this child be as powerful
As grass."
"May this child persist as does
The grass."
Slender greens, golds and browns,
Fox grass, bunch grass, crab grass
Oat grass, wheat grass, rye grass.
Grasses of the great plains.
Grasses of woodland meadows.
Grasses of the mountainside.
Grasses of the marshes.
Grasses crumbling cement in cities.

Grass
Feeding
The world and turning
Every fallen thing
Into waves in the wind.

Penny J. Novack


Maeve


There is silence now by the grey cairn where
the queen is buried:
No one weeps there remembering her beauty.
Only a faint sweet complaining
Of wind and wind-stirred grasses and far-off
murmurous sea-waves
Is making a sleep-heavy sound, a song to deepen
her slumber.
Does quiet weigh on her heart, here on the
desolate mountain?
Or is she content to sleep, the spear-whirr and
sword-clang forgotten?

Nay! She awakes, she comes forth. The gold of
her tresses
Flames through the night -- red flame by a storm-
wind dishevelled:
She has no need to call for her chiefs, or her
bronze-bitted horses,
She rides with the host of the Sidhe, with gods
dream-hearted and secret:
The night is her own, and the wide un-trammelled
ways of the wind.
She is fierce and splendid and pale, Maeve the
battle-awakener,
Maeve of the honey-sweey mouth, Maeve of the
death-bitter kisses.

Ella Young

Greeting

Over the wave-patterned sea-floor,
Over the long sun-burnt ridge of the world,
I bid the winds seek you
I bid them cry to you
Night and morning
A name you loved once;
I bid them bring to you
Reed songs, and songs of the small birds --
and sleep.

Ella Young

From Marzilian and Other Poems, Harbison and Harbison, Oceano, 1938



Brigid Chant

Early on Brigid's morn
The serpent shall rise from the hole
I'll not harm the serpent, nor will the serpent harm me.

Adapted from Carmina Gadelica as a circle chant by Elizabeth Cunningham http://www.passionofmarymagdalen.com/