March’s green studded with a cosmos
of your suns, petals thick and furry,
a child’s gold, shining teeth of miniature lions
jousting on emerald banners of fairy queens
and yet at night how quickly you fade
in the birch cup bled of your gold, in
pale and withdrawn mood, for plucked once
you will not reopen. I don’t have that hope
but on the lawn you will sustain another morning
casting yourself in weird symmetry with the great
ball of fire round which we ever revolve;
reviver of tired spirits, I drink you in warming
my fingertips on a chill morning, juvenescent and
singing lightly of forgotten lines of communion
between heaven and earth, between
worlds seen and unseen. How sad those that think
you but a weed, you who adorn a Goddess,
Brigid thrice blessed!

[Michael Routery is a writer and poet living in Northern California. His work can be found in a wide variety of publications, including Beatitude: 50, Datura, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina devotional anthologies, Written In Wine, Bearing Torches, Unbound, and Out of Arcadia. ]