Her plain face flushed with joy,

Wreathed in flowers like the brightest day in spring,

She walks under the thread unwound

From Frigg's spindle. Her hand

Clasped in his, her eyes meet

That dancing glance, gentle only for her

Even though she is not the most beautiful,

Or powerful, or grand. His cynical eyes have seen

All those things, and others, and dismissed them.

She is the wife of his disillusionment,

Whose heart will give him the hope to keep going.

 

If he had seen the future, the chase, the fight,

The slaying of sons, the tortured madness of the cave,

Would he have stepped with her under the spindle's thread,

Gone ahead with the wedding of a child-bride,

Carried an Asa maiden off to the little cottage,

Playing house with her as if nothing would happen?

I do not know. I cannot see his eyes

As they were, only those mad orbs

When they came up out of the cave.

 

But I have seen her,

Seen her heart, her strength, her endurance

In the face of all things suffered,

And of all Gods she was the only one

Who could bear up under such pain and still love,

Who could live through such torment and not be hardened,

Who could see the future as it would be

And still take the hand of the one man she loved.

 

O gracious goddess, teach those of us with the Sight

That sometimes the struggle we see is just the beginning,

And challenge us to look a little further

To see the seeds buried in the burning, blackened field

That fills our most prophetic dreams.

 

 

(Artwork by Miz D)