Mael Brigde is a devotee of the Irish goddess and saint, Brigit. She founded the Daughters of the Flame in order to rekindle the perpetual fire once burned by the sisters of Saint Brigit in Kildare, Ireland. She lit the Daughters’ first candle on Imbolc 1993, unaware that on the same day in Kildare, Catholic Brigidine Sisters were relighting it as well. Both flames continue still. As part of her devotion to Brigit, Mael Brigde strives to learn all she can of her lore and traditions and to share this with others who seek her. In addition to maintaining the Daughters of the Flame and two Brigit blogs, Brigit’s Sparkling Flame (2004), and a poetry blog, Stone on the Belly (2015), Mael has contributed essays and poems to a number of books, assisted others in their researches, led webinars on Brigit and Brigidine devotion, and created three online courses. The first, Discovering Brigit, introduces the saint and goddess and offers tools for learning more about her. The second, Stepping Into Brigit, guides the seeker into a deepening connection with Brigit. Journey with Brigit, Goddess of Poetry, is a longer, intensive class that explores reading and writing poetry as a sacred act, offering meditations, historical information, and the model of both ancient and modern Irish poets.
Red-Haired Boy
that one
– hair the colour of dried blood –
latched his mouth
to your swollen breast
– that hair
that mouth
made from you
from his half-foreign father –
drank you into himself and grew
that child
every portion of him the promise
of a king
– his father the beautiful
his grandfather the Good God
his mother
goddess of word and craft –
how could he not fall prey
to those who twisted
turned him
how could he not wish
to please his father well
yet how
how could he come before
his mother’s people
before the smith who loved him
beg of him a splendid spear
seek to cut him down
when the spear refused the service
when the smith wrenched back his arm
hurled the weapon home
how could your son not fall
before him hundreds died
born again in the Well of Wholeness
that well now shattered
Ruadán remained
as he fell
lay screaming
on crimson ground
till
silence on the land
and you
how could you not upwell
as the divine river before you broke its banks
and all the horror and all the sorrow
of that awful scything
not emerge in ululation
the birth of keening
at the slaying of your son
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