We Are One Etymology Away from Destruction

the easter of our civilization

My neck’s been jacked for a few days, so yesterday I finally broke down and took a muscle relaxer. Then went to the Ol’ Bard Poetry Club and wrote this little ditty about the Germanic spring goddess Ostara, also known as Ēostre, for whom Easter is named (not, as previously postulated by someone or other, the goddess Ishtar).

You remember how Ol’ Bard goes: we each throw out a word, and everyone has to use it in the poem they are writing. Easter, I think, was the first word (thanks, Rick), so this makes some sense. About halfway through the session I feel asleep, so I missed the final words, but I made it to Jesus stealing Ostara’s body, so...here you go. Spring cometh.

Ostara was so defiant, risen

as fingers splayed. Ostara disappeared,

her words vanishing

to the woods, an impoverished easter

bread, the frangipani of easter,

the delicate velvet coat

of easter, the easter of our civilization

pulling on the knot

back to the bog

where the fairies make our bread—

we will allow the engine fish,

we will demand of the inner ear

a biblical binding of the skin

of certainty, of origin.

Uncrossable, the letters;

unassailable the dawn goddess’s

arrowheads. Making a sound

called morning. In lonelier days,

Ostara ran amok, rose

so that she could be seen.

Rose on the ether.

She did this for many decades,

rising like the easter daffodil,

until she was stolen

from herself & transmogrified

into the body of a man

whose father was a god.

Who now rises year after year

in a stolen body,

rises like a stolen

language.

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