Beginning Again On Imbolc

Welcome back! I’m writing this, the first of a new series of posts and newsletters, on Imbolc.

Imbolc is the first stirring of spring underground. It’s lambing time, Brigid’s day – Brigid who was a goddess of creative fire and fertility, long before she was a saint.

In Gaelic, Imbolc means “in the belly of the mother.” Movement in the womb, milk filling the breast of earth.

You can feel it: things beginning to come to life, beneath the ice. It’s been an icy winter here in the Finger Lakes – unstable footing in every sense.

And by the time this is posted, it will be Valentine’s Day.

Best to ignore the Lupercalian origins of that one. Instead I’m going to celebrate romantic love.

Because Don and I got married in 2022. After eighteen years together (and sixty years after we first were lovers in college).

So, since this journal is a place for me to share poems, ruminations, and good news, I’ll start things off with a new love poem from the “new and selected poems” book I’m working on:

My Father Comes to My Wedding

So here we are, marrying one another
after all these years.

And I am crying,
unable to speak the vow I’ve written

which begins with my father’s words –
almost our last conversation before he died –

Ruthie, the one you should have married
was that fellow with the wolf –

you being the fellow who came to meet my family
bringing a wolf cub.

You have always been the one for me,
I whisper.

And here is my father standing beside me.
I can smell his cigarettes and tweed and aftershave.

He is smiling; he is wiping his eyes.

If you would like to receive these posts as email newsletters, you can subscribe here: https://mailchi.mp/bbb44aec1ff9/ruth-thompson-poet-channel