Slitherings: An Imbolc Prayer

This evening when the shadows fall just right and a fiery, once-bright night
melts, darkens, and hardens like wax spilled across the dead planks
of a cold church floor, you might glimpse the body of a naked woman
nailed to Brigid’s crosses in cathedrals, chapels, and even on every pagan’s wall.

She was as beautiful as Earth once. And, Earth was beautiful once –
before they pointed to their crosses and proved that even a goddess
could be crucified and every last snake could be driven away.

But the snakes weren’t actually driven away. Brigid remembered something
her great grandmother used to say about fertility and infinity, how it doesn’t
matter if you call it Imbolc or Candlemas or just doing the right thing.

Brigid opened herself to the serpent refugees, gathered Ireland’s snakes
into her womb, gave them a safe place to hide, to bide their time, before
she pulled herself up against the cross’ roughhewn wood to fill her flesh
with splinters and her tired lungs with one last delicious breath before

she suffocated and died. No one who chokes to death resurrects –
not rabbis, not saints, not even ancient goddesses. But, tonight –
Brigid’s belly night – if you push your skull through the slush and mud,
the broken bones and seeping blood, and listen to the soil –
the life-giving soil – you just might hear, in the soft hiss of thawing frost,
a baby spring being born and the gentlest joy of countless slitherings.

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Will Falk (he/him) is a biophilic writer and lawyer. The natural world speaks and Will's work is how he listens. His law practice is focused on helping Native American tribes protect their culture and sacred places. His first collection of poetry, When I Set the Sweetgrass Down, was released by Homebound Publications' Wayfarer Books in April, 2023.