At Imbolc

      At Imbolc...on occupied wah-haz-he land between the middle waters, at frost fog wolf moon,

darkest winter cottonwood budding, you are the genius da da, wild herb ways at Imbolc turning, Aun hah day, bear on its feet walking, thunder lightning, whirlwind, coming down, into the sun, Ursa major and Stella Maris, the polaris bear star of our mother, morning star woman, water woman, walking sunwise bringing bowls of deer meat, dried Ribes americanum, black currants nursing smiling woman, changing woman and her beautiful child, our sun’s and daughters with ten medicines.

The ten medicines are cottonwood bud medicine, monarda, soap root bear grass yucca, grindelia, prairie red root, butterfly weed, purple cone flower, purple flower vervain, spikenard, poleo, elm bark, estafiate and hawthorn and rose hip medicine.

Turns us to budding rising veriditas, the budding greening Christ light born of all mother Mary-ma, at yuletide Christmas, not only in hearts as the infant child but in plants and roots under fallen snow. Seeing the star gleaming in the sky over a house of bread. Our house of remedios, envisioned and built meade, warmed by fire and fed by beer and wine filled song. The house of bread is the house of abundance and storage of grain, salty cheese, of apple and dried walnuts, acorns, pine nuts, potatoes, carrots and pig fed on acorns, sour cabbage, and sausage.

The star shining over our necessary homes of bread, loss and gain, our grain of abundance. We are cautious to embrace the origin story of Imbolc in verse as it is blooming in us. When we look up at the night sky, turned and turning with the wheel with all our hopes, all our longing, with the deepest forlorn melancholy, the roads all filled with mud, staring at the twinklings, at the great bear clock that turns around polaris, half way between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox, here we meet our ancestor messengers.

While it’s said in between time with the thinning veil, comes at all hallows, remember son and daughter, your ancestors are more than names and letters. These ancestors are the flesh and muscle hanging on the bones of your face. Why do we honour our ancestors? Because these ancestors are the tears and laughter deepest impulses and longings, you had, they had with you.

It was every year they struggled and sighed and waited for the budding of cottonwood. In the political tent some may know their names in a list and some of you may not know a single name. Yet the one who knows a lengthy list and the one who knows nothing by their very breathing have a list as lengenthy as hills, as muddy as rivers and tallest as mountains.