A Month of Poetry for Brighid

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

The Findian Spear

The Phantom Queen

My lady she is coming;
Dark lady at the ford
Can you see her?  She is washing
Years of blood from shield and sword.

One hundred battles laden
With the blood of all the dead,
Out with armaments is wading,
Turning raging river red.

A crow lands on her shoulder—
It surveys me with her eyes.
Every day I’m getting older,
Knowing everybody dies.

My heart is growing colder,
On my flesh the crow will dine.
Is it I should not have told her
That the shield and sword were mine?

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

The Phantom Queen

This one is out of order.  In terms of chronology of writing, it should actually come between "Poetry in Motion" and "[Un]natural."  I warn that it is a little naughty, but by being suggestive rather than explicit.  

 

Paramour

Furtive steps slice through the tiring streets,
A cloak of clouds blots even starlight out,
Bescreening dark the trysting couple greets.

Bodies move as shadows in the dark,
Like formless phantoms all invisible,
Groping for the one who shares their spark.

The chill throws heated bodies in relief.
Hot breath in tantric curls hangs on the lips
While eager visions prove its nimble thief.

A pulsing, pounding in the heart of hearts
Circulates the craving of the blood,
Seeking out that ghost of scent that darts

And sets the tongue to taste the very air,
Seeking in primal yearning,
As if to find its object trembling there.

Flesh quivers with imagined touch,
It dots the skin with goosebumps, stands the hair.
Covetous fingers on a vision clutch.

And in that moonless, starless dark of night
Two pairs of eyes shoot lightning through the sky
Two souls in bursts of ardor light

And with ten thousand volts are bound
In a circuit of electro-magnetism
To touch, caress, and so defy the ground.

Their heaving chests pull with such gravity
They raise from off the earth and float on air.
Their fire lifts them to divinity.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

The Phantom Queen

Imbolc in the Desert

There are no birches here,
No oaks or cedars,
No grass to graze the lactating ewe.

There is no snow here,
Or snowdrops either,
No rain or sleet from which your light explodes.

There are no rivers here,
Frozen over by Beira’s hammer
To be melted by your fingers’ touch.

Though here there may be no eternal flame
Kept burning by the women at Kildare,

When the cactus blossoms
And the Yucca’s spiny leaf
Spears the sky with a new-green blade,

When the dust-devil sings a song
Both fell and eerily beautiful,

When the radiant sun
Bears your beaming face
And your arms stretch out to comfort me,

I know you are here
As much as any place.