The days that fall halfway between solstices (longest and shortest days of the year) and equinoxes (equal length day and night) are referred to as cross quarter days and marked in some form in almost every tradition. In this part of the world, they line up with the first whispers of the newly emerging season. Four times a year, on these cross-quarter days, I will offer a poem to celebrate the turning wheel of the year. 

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Feast of Brigid*

 

This early February day.

Filbert catkins spilling out

the colour of the season to come.

First tentative sign that we have

made it through the harsh season.

 

But it’s a long way yet until May.

The eager seedlings that have sprouted

from last summer’s sunflowers along the fenceline will not make it.

 

The light waxes like a pale green candle

and grows fat as the buds on the camellia.

New lambs are born.

Hungry eagles feed on afterbirth

and the unlucky.

 

We wake from winter with our pocketful of dreams.

May we plant them in the right moment

be it cautiously or with the season’s foolish exuberance.

May we cast bright hopes before us

and bless the ones that glimmer and fade.

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- Submitted by Sophia Rosenberg

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*Brigid is the Celtic Goddess of poetry, healing and midwifery. Her Feast day is Feb. 2, the cross-quarter day of Imbolc, meaning ewe’s milk.