Our first Poem of the Month for 2020 comes from Marine Cloud Brightening by Medbh McGuckian which was published in September 2019.
The Seed Mantra: A Gift Poem
Sweeping up a leaf
that blew in last November
I thought, there will be no more
autumns, I shall have no more winter
this year, I thought it best
to omit the season.
I went out in a fiery field
to find a propitious name
for a child in the four
afterlife realms, and something
was bestowed, a plaited blonde
wave-shape in faded yellow.
Yet everything was white,
the textile handles with ribbons.
The double line of gold
around the dust of some,
the scythes cutting through the pearl
of this year’s sequence of wet and fine.