St. Brigid’s Day
On the first day of the month,
for luck, my husband and I say
“Rabbit” before speaking another word,
Some months it works. “Calm
us into a quietness,” a prayer
to the saint asks. But now, with
sheer vulgarity the order of the day
in our nation’s capital, luck seems
insufficient. And there is a quiet today,
the first birthday my father does not
progress into his new year. Bad luck,
his heart said, and stopped. Now the first
February 1 in 93 years he has remained
silent, the first in my many decades
I have not sung to him. How he
liked to hear it, how even on the phone
he grinned and said in his abashed
and undeserving voice, Thank You.
That gratitude being a sort of luck.
Perhaps I’m too old for luck-seeking.
The echo of his words, maybe that’s enough.
*
Winter Passage
To teach myself to pray
I walk where deer walk,
brush against last summer’s
bluestem and sedge. Bend
past arbor vitae, careful
against branch, against
abandoned hive. How swift
deer are to shift and counter;
the ample world curls
and blossoms around them.
At crack or cough they do not
hide or feint but flash.
Here, too, is path of coyote.
Red squirrel and vole
cross quick. My breath rises
in puff and volt, impermanent
marks. Two blue jays,
a junco, skirt my passage,
good companions near lake
and rush, chirrup chirrup,
no need to hurry prayer.
*
Take Hold
after “Petaluma Olive Trees” by JoAnn Verburg
Imagine a hand moving toward you
out of the tumult. Care must be taken.
It is a crone’s hand. Let’s say it is
your mother returned, her nails smooth,
knuckles like prayer beads, palm etched
in the sweep of contour lines.
This stranger’s hand emptied itself long ago.
Imagine replacing what has been lost.
Or chanting into it, your breath damp
and smelling of lemons. Any thought can be
sustained by the disposition of emptiness.
Imagine it is your hand—thick with lichen
the color of olives—arriving out of the future.
Do not be afraid when you do not recognize it.
*
Winter
“The house yawns like a bear.” – Denise Levertov
Snow glides down the steel roof,
shreds and fidgets past the door,
so that, when we step into the diffuse
light of afternoon, the snow cheers
below our boots a high and goofy
skirl, and we step with a light
flourish, dance even, the penguin shuffle
that keeps us centered and upright.
Thanks to snowfall the world’s muffled
and sedate. Though it’s too cold to delight
in being outside for long.
We stack the tinder, light a fire,
and are ready to hunker down
with the dog, spend the entire
evening find ways to belong
to winter: hot toddy, torrid film,
foot massage, sliced pears and camembert.
Once the moon rises avuncular and trim
we’ll go up to bed, we mellowed pair
and there embrace in our snug hibernal realm.
*
Question
We’d just eaten rice
and Brussels sprouts,
roasted chicken with lemon
when someone asked
Let’s say we had all day
with someone who’s gone on,
who would you invite,
and why? Your mother,
my father said.
I’d been thinking Emily
or Walt, but my father dropped
his history onto the table.
He was sitting beside
his second wife. Why my mother,
I asked? He had
things to say to her—
apologies to make. For one sweet
moment, I knew him as I’d never done.
*
Athena Kildegaard is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Prairie Midden, which won the 2023 WILLA Literary Award for poetry. She teaches at the University of Minnesota Morris.
Lovely poems, all. Re “Take Hold,” yikes, that hand has arrived. Re “Question,” what a wonderful thing to say front of a daughter and second wife. But why does one say “Rabbit?”
Ha! I don’t know how many people have this tradition, but we try to say “Rabbit” on the first day of the month, before we say anything else, and this is supposed to bring good luck!