Today’s challenge is to write about a creation myth. As I live not  a couple country miles from the Shannon Pot, the source of the River Shannon, it felt only natural to take as my source the Source itself. The poem is based on folklore about how Ireland’s longest river came into being.

Log na Síonna – Síonnan’s Pot

 

It always begins with a woman

curious, brave

wanting to be wise

 

Síonnan, daughter of mortal

and shining immortal one is

pot-bellied full to the brim

being told ‘no’ – it can turn a soul

truculent

 

being considered other

outside the covenanters

with power.  Bold  Síonnan –

young, lithe, subject to no man

stirred the Pot, undoing any

druid spell, freeing those nuts

 

of wisdom to flow as the Pot

roiled and boiled and rose above

druid ire, chasing Síonnan

as hound after hare

down the country, mile upon mile

making loughs, flooding

 

meadowed plains. Síonnan

ran and ran with that wisdom

running towards her grandfather

Mannanán mac Lir’s embrace

in wild Atlantic wave

finding his loving face

 

It always begins with a woman

curious, brave

wanting to be wise