Freyja Speaks to the Skalds

Freyja Speaks to the Skalds

Now I call you, brother

across the ticking void

Feel my hand in yours,

over the scars and tears.

I’m with you where you sit

milling the weary hours

finer finer into a dry flour

that chokes the heart’s pores

for it’s bitter bread

as I was with you

when you raised the promise-cup

in Midgard’s torch-red halls

and played for swinish ears 

that ragged tune

of stars and battles, destinies of glass

of ebbing tides and the bones

of love’s last child, with

the gods' last dance

there before

we wore our names,

when your hand spiraled

deep in the womb black cave, 

lining for me the ochre herds

wallrunning to fill the stomach

of evernight with life

for all eternity’s migration.

I held you up

in your thin skin boat

of fancy's faith and grief;

I tried you, through the floods 

of high seas’ anchorage,

through the dark blood conquest,

holding the dripping blade. In

the stone-ringed grove

under the crooked moon

I spared your life, 

left you one-eyed, lamed but singing

in a tinsel of smudged neon night

on a winedark streetcorner wave

where every loss collides

in subway clamor or benched

in garden’s dusky still, for you my

pole-circling breath melts and blows
the spice of far Carib, because

I call you brother.

Under threads of silver gold

where seven shed skins make 

a thorny crossroads of your face

still you vigil for the heartsong.

Hear my fade note whisper on shadow wind:

call me, call me, always I will come

but when the sun pours through

white curtains and every

bell is ringing

of course the spell

is broken and

I’m gone.

February-March 2012

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Challenge: Love and Affection 

"I write because I love it."

~Joan Armatrading

I've had this one in the works awhile, but this prompt really helped it crystalize and while it may seem an odd choice for the theme in some ways, it is about love, the tenuous, pervasive and demanding love  between the Muse in all her guises and her chosen victims and celebrators, along with my usual magpie mix of Norse and other myth, history and prehistory, some of which I owe to the Celtic and Early/Post-Christian 
mytho-poetic synthesis of Brendan MacOdrum of Oran's Well. 
Thank you Brendan, for Lascaux, the coracles and the garden bench.

Freyja: in Norse mythology, a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, gold, seiðr(sorcery), war, and death. (Technically,her brother is Freyr, per wikipedia, among other things 'a phallic fertility god,...[given] Álfheimr, the realm of the Elves, as a teething present.')

skald or scald:
 —n    (in ancient Scandinavia) a bard or minstrel
[from Old Norse, of unknown origin]~World English Dictionary 

Promise cup: 'The bragarfull "promise-cup" or bragafull "best cup" or "chieftain's cup" (compare Bragi, [god of poetry]) was in Norse culture a particular drinking from a cup or drinking horn on ceremonial occasions, often involving the swearing of oaths...'~wikipedia

Image: Freja, By John Bauer 1882-1918 (www.uppsalaauktion.se) [Public domain], 

via wikimedia commons