A Poem for Imbolc

Hold your breath at the pregnant pause…

So much to say not yet being said,

A thought mulled, considered.

A finger held momentarily on a spinning record.

Stop in the stillness.

Listen in the silence.

It crackles with expectation.

Hisses with the signs and the symbolic.

The white noise of the certainty of circularity.

It’s ice. It’s sleep. It’s bare.

But it’s not barren. It’s not death.

It’s not empty or inert.

And when the ice drips and the bird cuts the sky,

When the green shoots the brown

And the sun blazes in a swathe of pink,

The sheer beauty of the minutiae of movement

Holds us rapt and ready.

We are eager for the bustle

And buzz and busy to come.

But if the seasonal slowness has been enjoyed not endured,

Then there is an unexpected act of mourning

That morning when we stretch and turn to the Spring.