Well Bottom Blues

Jera

This Winter’s Night
A modern Rune Poem of Jera

Call up the sun with bonfire.
Wheels turn poorly in the snow
without encouragement. Let fire
bring stars down to snowy Earth
and to eyes bright with wine.
If the Moon is dark be solemn,
silently watch the stars wheel.
If the moon is bright, turn in dance.
Drape the garlanded everlasting
with bright pearls of mistletoe
to seed the cattle and the fields.
Jera is the union of the year gone
with the year new born, swaddled
against the cold. Consider the last
done and undone, and plot what
is to come, when faithful dog comes
following the hunter. Meat waits,
yielding to the spit for the brave.
Children come from the union
on warm furs to bless summer.
From the collision of Issa
and Kenaz, life’s eternal return.
Jera is the Libra of the North,
the point of balance, weighing
the last by which to measure
the accounts of days to come.

The rune Issa is associated with ice, and Kenaz fire, and the collision of the two a reference to the Germanic creaction my of Ginnungagap.