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.
ReplyDeleteA very creative and imaginative poem! Well done.
ReplyDeleteWonderful, as is your honoring of your shieldmaiden.
ReplyDeleteLiving where I do, stars is something always connect to the winter... star-gazing requires a very warm sleeping bag.
ReplyDeleteI am never too old to learn something new: Hrimfaxi & Skinfaxi.
ReplyDeleteThis stanza:
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.
- it brings it all together beautifully.
What a brilliant poem I love your use of metaphor ‘ The stars are the grains of his pitch-hooved mill’ - Hrímfaxi is not just a horse traveling through space, but a force crushing the stars themselves into the passage of time. Great rhythm too you have written something I find quite haunting 🙌
ReplyDeleteThis is pure witchery, Shay. It starts strong with that incomparable first stanza, and every metaphor your brush across it makes the image of Night more vivid, more chilling, yet also more compelling and perhaps, even in the way of the Norns who have already woven all our Fates, comforting in its finality. You cannot argue with the horse of the gods who gallops their ownership over the firmament. The last couplet is especially fine--even unforgettable.
ReplyDelete"every metaphor *you* brush across it...." sigh
DeleteI love the details embodied in myths - the dew forming from what drips from his bit, "Hrimfaxi shakes and cold stars fill the sky..."
ReplyDeleteThat opening stole my breath away! The narrative is enchanting and told so boldly, crisply and clearly the reader begins to hear the rhythmic pounding of not-so-distant hoofbeats, and feel the coming nighttime chill.
ReplyDelete