Poetry: Brigid, Earthbound

In Celtic mythology, Brigid is patroness of poetry, craft, cows, fertility, & springtime

Brigid, Earthbound

for my Irish ancestors

If we come into being through our longing,
find me in meadowsweet,
where Kerry cows are lowing
in the dappled light.
If a flower is as much a flower
scrambling up a roadside holler
as bee-hopping in a prairie,
then I exist somewhere beyond the pages
of an old tome on the lives of saints,
a book of pastoral poetry
or a treatise on bovine veneration,
materializing most fully in the presence
of those musty, living creatures,
with their warm hides & gentle ruminations,
folding themselves into the field
before the coming of rain.

This poem was published in Canary: a Literary Journal of the Environment, June 2023.