Ogham

Poem by Rocco Valentini

Artwork Sourced From Pinterest. Artist: Sara Jo

Ogham

by Antonio Rocco S. (Rocco Valentini)

Her eyes are turquoise
Like Lir’s foam
From which she has risen;
A Celtic Venus incarnate.
Freckles scatter across her skin
Like flecks of sea spray
As the waves kiss her soft round belly,
Her wide hips,
And thighs that bear her weight with each step
Toward a shore
Whose sandy ridges mirror her stretch marks.
Little swans follow behind her,
Her head a torch that guides them. 
Her hair burns red
Like Fragarach’s edge; 
Cutting not just through men’s armor,
But through the illusions they cling to
About what makes a woman beautiful.

ᚏᚑᚉᚉᚑ ᚃᚐᚂᚓᚅᚈᚔᚅᚔ

I do not advance toward her;
I am carried,
As Scuabtuinne was carried
When the sea yielded to its master’s thought.
She steers me through companionship
And into the isle of marriage. 
Stretch marks are a mother’s runes;
Ogham etched onto her by her lover 
To protect her children. 
In the dark
I carve my name. 
She is no Venus de’ Medici.
I am no Michelangelo. 
Our bedroom is no Florence. 
We are ordinary. 
That is enough. 
Real love and real bodies
Are not chiseled from marble.

Is fearr an macántacht ná an mhaisiúchán.
(Translation: Honesty is better than ornament.)

Footnote: ᚏᚑᚉᚉᚑ ᚃᚐᚂᚓᚅᚈᚔᚅᚔ spells Rocco Valentini in Ogham.