Gray gathering
Signs fell on the musty register. Two pallid
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.
We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day. Our love was castaway
Our love was time bomb. Crossing stars, we trembled
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some
Lost ocean’s horizon.
When first we met,
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on
The paper as it now burns in my mind
Like Brigid’s fire. At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.
Anointed under the votive stars violently
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart
A rail. Our love was charmed, our love was time,
Balm. To what end this new beginning?
Nineteen priestesses were assigned to tend the perpetual flame of the sacred fire of Brigid. Each was assigned to keep the flames alive for one day. On the twentieth day, the goddess Brigid herself kept the fire burning brightly.
The goddess Brigid was also revered as the Irish goddess of poetry and song. Known for her hospitality to poets, musicians, and scholars, she is known as the Irish muse of poetry.