Yule

Yule

We sing in celebration of green grass and warm days past,

of gratitude for healthy, fat goats

while the icy wind whips into our hair and skin, 

while Grandy slits the bucks’ throats, slices

through hair and skin into cartilage; the blood 

draining into large, clay pots.  He saws the forelegs off

at the knees.  On our knees we sing the words 

to tell them their gift is as vast as an ocean;

the length of one season to the next.

We ply pelt from body to be made

to blankets; we work quickly before 

the sun winks away. The sun winks away 

quickly these days, communing low

and quiet as Mother cuts the meat,

the liver, hearts and sweet breads.

We children chop the wood to feed the fire

to roast the bones that we’ll boil 

to make the broth that will carry us 

through the cold.

Grandy says this kalter moon will be the harshest yet;

we make the blood pudding to cure

before we walk in the twilight,

our skins and furs stained and sticky;

the air sharp, like metal.

We wind the stiffening intestines 

around the branches of the cedar.

The branches of the cedar are where we place 

these gifts of life, where we sing the songs of welcome

to any creature in need of food and warmth—

come, take all you can carry

take all you need as we have plenty

come take of this life, to feed yours.

We lay the leg bones beneath the tree

on the frosted ground.

We walk near the angry, black river, 

the reeds brittle, brown and sparse,

taking two haunches to the old grandmother,

the haguzussa, with one foot in our cold world

with its intestine-wrapped limbs,

the other in the tree of life with gods.

She had no goats this year; she is too old to keep them.

But she can still whisper to the bees,

gifts us a jar of sweet honey to dip our meat in.

After we return home and scrub the blood from under our nails

I sit by the fire and drift, dream of owls and vultures

visiting the cedar, eating their fill, flying home to their families.

Dream of wolves bringing a leg to their den

to crack and lick, the marrow carrying them forward

through the darkness.  I picture a man and his child 

slicing through the thick garland to make a stew, bringing a leg home

to pound out the tendon, pound the tendon to cord into thread, 

to strengthen pants and shirts to keep out the continuous cold.

When I am long in my own winter 

I will sit under the snow-hushed sky by a fire, blessed 

by the grand-grand-children of our goats 

that offered up their lives for us today, 

and when the fear becomes too much, I will remember

to look instead to answers: 

When does the water freeze?

When do we separate the buck from the flock? 

When do we ready the knives and saws?

I know even during the coldest moons,

with darkness ready to swallow us whole,

we are not alone in our fears or means.