Hrimfaxi shakes and cold stars fill the sky--
His breath falls and frosts the fields.
Like the currents of tide or wind,
his movement is his purpose and your life
is simply a road for his hooves,
a place where he will go and has been.
Nótt whispers and he slows;
she raises her hand and time stutters, every star goes still.
The firmament is the field through which he goes,
and his hoofbeats are the ticking of time.
His body moves through wheeling constellations,
and the stars are the grains of his pitch-hooved mill.
No structure can hold Hrimfaxi, no time precedes him.
There has never been an hour when he was not there,
carrying Nótt away from and toward Dagr and Skinfaxi.
Day, loud bright harlequin on Loki's leash, I give you no care.
I wait for Hrimfaxi, who stamps and stars tumble unmoored,
whose sides are bellows for a cold fire, and who treads the moonlit air.
for Dora at Dverse Poetics.
Also in honor of my shieldmaiden BFF, Joy.
Daylight and ninety plus degrees outside and I can feel the frost and hear the stamping hooves across the constellations. This "cold fire" -- full of raw energy tamed only by the night -- surely burns with a life wholly free of time's stranglehold. And so you carry us away with the magic of your words, Shay, and the darkness somehow is bright.
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