Keeping the Flame

A Meditation on Imbolc

Can you feel it? Can you feel the gentle tug of a thread in the cloak of winter starting to unravel? It begins with birdsong, the energetic song thrush on the highest tops of the bare trees, singing to the coming unseen. After months of silence, the sudden carolling of the feathered survivors of frost and snow stirs hope.

The morning light over the horizon grows brighter earlier each passing day, inky night peeling away to grey and milky light where once there was only darkness. Sleepy bulbs and corms are stirring, sending up an army of bright green shoots through the baren earth, testing the air and announcing their coming. Snowdrops force their way through bramble tangle and the mess of browned grass and dead leaves, hope in a single tear. Buds begin to swell on the bare twigs of half-drowned trees and the long-tails search their sweetness for grubs.

Imbolc, the marking of the midway point between midwinter and the vernal equinox, marking the slow turn of the earth back to the sun, lifting her face towards the light. Signs of change in this battle-weary world don’t have to be shooting stars or earthquakes or a river changing its course. There are signs of hope everywhere, even in the smallest of things, even where all seems lost and dead and sere.

Can you feel it? The heavy blanket of slumber being sloughed off, the awakening of the natural world a tangible promise. Can you too lift your winter-weary head, open your frost-nipped heart and see that you are not alone in your wakefulness? Just now, there is just the spark of hope, but soon - sooner than you think - the flame of rebirth will light up the woods again.

Imbolc

I write what it means to be human:

But something is no longer the same.

The world turning from darkness to light,

Birdsong and green shoots

Catching fire from the earth,

Singing the old song she knows by heart.

With all life’s messy flaws –

Smoke and burning and something very wrong,

The fleeting inconsistencies of passion and despair –

The air is thicker now, more opaque.

Words invisible flow from my heart,

“Come back! The woods are on fire. Come back!”

The exact height of a falling tree, burning,

Laid bare on the page.

Words write themselves before I can think,

Tumbling down the firebreak towards me, like an avalanche.

And still I walk towards the flame.