I don't know why Imbolc should be my favorite of the eight pagan holy days of the quarters and cross-quarters. I like Beltane and Samhain just fine, but there is something special about February Second. Perhaps it's when the contrast is starkest, of the grim white desert where nothing is alive, save for the one who perceives that nothing is alive! Lost in the wind of a snowy field, where great elementals shuffle the weather for a new game of generations, the small flame of life in a huddled breast feels the profoundest of gratitude. We all love Yule because it's the rebirth of the Light and a promise of the return of summer, but it is only now that we know this on a biological level, in our cells. Some deep dark magic stirs, like a seed getting ready to prepare for initiating the preliminaries of germination. From now on, signs of spring are real and not hallucinatory -- soon the weeping willows will take on a golden glow over their leafless limbs, and soon thereafter the mapled hills tinge themselves subtly ruddy.
My friend and teacher, James I. Ford, Zen Man and the very icon of a New England Unitarian Minister, has a wonderful tribute to Brigid, the saint and the goddess, whose feast time is now, which is well worth experiencing. It's over at Monkey Mind Online, .
In times past, twice, pagan groups had approached me in email to ask to use a poem from my sometimes manifest personal Website, with the title Imbolc. Such flattery tends to win my assent. I though it good to publish the poem again here. Anyone can use it, providing they credit me and let me know.
Stay warm by your hearth, cherish your beloved ones, and finally dare to dream of spring.
Imbolc
It's not yet spring but you awake
the yearning in me that
will not wait for warm breezes
A candle in a cave--
in snowy fields, a lone prayer
for the town asleep below the hill
One stands at the ocean,
calling forth the tide
to rise once more in bay and blood
Two meet on a road in the dark
and walk into windless groves where
dryads keep to dream, and wait
The candle ignites the sky to pink--
the spirits stir within
the chambers of the twigs
