Imbolc 2009

Imbolc 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

Today is Imbolc, the first day of the Celtic spring.

Each year I've used that line, I've been greeted with rolling eyes and gentle laughter. "Where I live, spring is still many weeks away."

I think that is the difference between the Celts and the Christians who co-opted their festivals. The Celts saw two distinct signs of spring today. They saw the light had returned to the level it was at Samhain (All Hollow's Eve). They saw the ewes lactating, a sure sign that lambs were on the way. Their traditions survive from the cold and desolate places where they lived, Ireland, Wales, Scotland.

Theirs wasn't a Nordic cold. The Norse didn't have much use for a goddess of poetry anyway. Winter for them was a time for sharpening weapons and preparing the longboats to launch once the thaw came while the skalds inspired them with the sagas. An egalitarian people, they didn't discriminate on whose lands they raided, on whose books they liked to eat.

The Celts were more in tune with nature than our Christian ancestors. In Christianity, today is the Feast of Candlemas, the Purification of the Virgin. Where the Celts focused on the quality of light outside, I think the Christians saw only darkness, saw only another day to burn candles against the pagan night. Some see seeds, where others see only soil.

Here, a bright yellow fog of pine pollen drifts in front of the windows with every gust of wind. Soon, that wind will turn amber-brown as the oaks join their cousins' arboreal fertility rite. Brigid's flame sparks the red unfolding in the new leaves of the maples, and fans the yellow-orange embers dying in the oaks. Fallen leaves reflect the sun like so many water droplets splashed across the road, like so many tiny candles strewn across the lawn. Crepe myrtles wander naked through the landscape, their limbs barren of all but last year's empty husks.

Cardinals dot the branches, vibrant reminders of the season just begun. They disguise themselves among the hibiscus, sheltering near solitary blossoms. Orange honeysuckle lift their trumpets toward the sky, the first flowers of a coming symphony. Azalea's pop with recently forgotten colors, purples, pinks and reds.

Eagles and osprey call their mates to nest. They return to the same haunts year after year, latticeworks overlooking the rich hunting of a tidal basin, pines towering above the stone-strewn field of human dead. Soon their nests will blossom with young in ones and twos like the wildflowers dotting the lake shores their parents hunt. Young heads will cry for life to feed their insatiable hunger, their need to see a future as bright with promise as their piercing eyes.

I hope today you will turn your own eyes toward the horizon and search for the subtle omens that spring is on its way. Like the alpine flowers whose blossoms burst through snow, the signs are there for those who unchain their blinders, and choose clarity over night.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III