St Brigids Day 1989

- Leland Bardwell

The women’s calls

go up across the lake.

On this still day their voices

whip the air – staccato notes

behind the reed-hushed margin.

Winter is writing out its past

before its time

while they trail the shore

 anxious to garner reeds

for Brigid’s Cross, bending

in all their different flesh-shapes

 like shoppers to admire a bud,

 an early primrose, a robin

 shrilly calling to its mate.

 Although I gather rushes

like these strolling women

I’m made conscious

of the decades that divide us

and that I should be celebrating

Brigid in her strength

of fruitfulness and learning.

 I can only offer her the satchel of these years,

I too, will make a cross, for luck and irony.

Amongst the witches coven I will raise my glass

so my children’s children’s children

 will gather rushes for her turning.