I wake up magic. Still smoke in my hair. First thought must get back to tent.

It was 31 degrees out and windchills so it felt 20 on the night we first put in the stove, seasoned a week outdoors.

Cast iron thick, and on an earthen tile floor. This is when Brigid gets in. Benefactor of poetry, iron, hearth. Mother of mid-winter, your prayers the first groan of springtime creeking sideways, knocking on door of sleep whispering wake wake, wake? from the pit inside my crinkled up weary vacant or hollow bones I talk to you, hear from you, again wise women in the midst of it all day after day quietly continue the work that they never for a moment let up (j. elise, we’moon 23).

Sacred rhythm rose red the beat alchemical thrum, transmuter: fire in the heart, Pink!
do not forget, this is a
World Song

It picks up stitch Annie Finch who for you ageless ancient lady faceless endless god I am s t u d y i n g bequeaths me, Blessing on the Poets: Patient earth-digger, impatient fire-maker, /Hungry word-taker and roving sound-lover,/Sharer and saver, muser and acher,/ You who are open to hide or uncover,/Time-keeper and -hater, wake-sleeper, sleep-waker/ May language’s language, the silence that lies/Under each word, move you over and over,/Turning you, wondering, back to surprise (Finch, 2013)
& too my inbox delivers me how clever how handy poets.org continues the serendipitous
window on the worlds~ in the ‘Ars Poetica’ is a question worth daily consideration: what are we willing to do with language? Where are we willing to make, and unmake, with what we say? (n. lovelace, poets.org*)

And so to the tent I go. Atop big pillows big as my body i stack & stumble tumble into smoke herbs pine block or stick kindling, split wood/s from a lightening strike tree & timing: we
who just happened to be in the right place & oh yea,
that (thank you junkyard dog rawr thank you
mirror

romantic in me not she/ emotional disposition or even it they sensitive spirit type, but these sideshoots from the annal that be, modern era a flagrant waste or )

/garner of my womb /

make light. thank you, &
yes

---

to brigid, on mid-winter dark moon, and
to poetry, (again–) (teeny tiny voice, did you hear it
just now~the bell ring?) bc finallyyyy!
igotmytent!! thenn
crow 1st time sings

*From poets.org: Nabila Lovelace is a first-generation Queens-born poet whose family is originally from Trinidad and Nigeria. The author of Sons of Achilles (YesYes Books, 2018), Nabila lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.