A Celtic Goddess’s Big Dream in My Poem, “Ballad of the Kitchen Bard”
It’s out! Here’s my poem with an extended whale metaphor about edging ever nearer to the reality of the “open nest,” assisted by the Goddess in one of Her Celtic dreamer manifestations! “Ballad of the Kitchen Bard” appears in the print anthology, The Weight of Motherhood, by Moonstone Press.
So many of the Celtic goddesses connect to the dreamworld. Some of them appear in the dreams of the men they choose— a theme that repeats and likely relates to a certain time in history when union with the goddess of the land bestowed on the King or male landowner his ultimate authority. This seems to be an intermediary stage between full Earth Goddess sovereignty and total patriarchal rule devoid of female divine agency (and of human female sovereignty).
Goddess Canola, by contrast, has a very vivid “big dream” of her own in a mystical experience on the beach after she has an argument with her husband. Through this dream she receives the inspiration for what becomes the classic Irish Harp.*
As a dreamworker who once studied whales in and around Stellwagen Bank, and who has walked the beach searching for and finding more of my voice by recording the first drafts of poems into my voice memo, I particularly resonate with the creative, seaside dreamer, Goddess Canola.
As a mother of three, perched on the edge of the newly termed “open nest,” I invoke the “open” aspect of this impending transition. A death of the family experience, as defined by children-at-home, is inevitable. The Celts believed in reincarnation. I know our family is being reborn into a new five-adult manifestation, equally as beloved and meaningful. But loss is loss. In this poem I embrace the phoenix while tending to this twenty-three-year-old family “body” of childhood as it dissolves into ashes.
Here is the poem~
Ballad of the Kitchen Bard
When I don’t cook. When I leave the kitchen
at dinnertime to take a poetry class. The absence
of the familiar smack of knife on wood with the dull
blades I use, so I don’t cut my fingers, as they push
through trunks of broccoli, the scrape of spatula
on pan, the beeps of oven, the soft squeaks
in the hinge as I pull the door down, the rasp
of metal pan on rack, the slam shut, the timer set,
its feep almost piercing, but reassuring in some
unregistered synapse that supper will be served.
The absence of that. The missing mother, gone
to her craft. Gone from the hearth. She, the heart
of the house, the thews that tether the body
together. They in their rooms, on phones, or in cave
office. They, the bones of an old whale needing new
wind, ready to slip from family’s barnacled skin—
lapped at and leathered from years of ocean,
scarred from the shark’s bite, from the boats’
blades, from the barge’s bow.
The Goddess Canola fought with her husband
then ran to the beach to clear her head
which filled with a mysterious music, lulling
her to sleep, to dream of the famed harp
she would create, waking to find sinews, still
strung from rib bones of the beached whale,
strummed under wind’s slippery thumbs.
Tomorrow I will return to the kitchen,
pour the oil, prep the peppers, mix
the bowls of sweet and bitter, as this
old whale slowly floats to shore.
*My introduction to and interaction with the Celtic goddesses comes from Judith Shaw’s extraordinary Celtic Goddess Oracle Deck with Guidebook. Shaw is both artist and author. https://judithshawart.com/product/celtic-goddess-oracle-deck-with-guidebook/