05 Issue-2 · 5 of 12
We sing in celebration of green grass and warm days past,of gratitude for healthy, fat goatswhile the icy wind whips into our hair and skin, while Grandy slits the bucks’ throats, slicesthrough hair and skin into cartilage; the blood draining into large, clay pots. He saws the forelegs offat the knees. On our knees we sing the words to tell them their gift is as vast as an ocean;the length of one season to the next.
We ply pelt from body to be madeto blankets; we work quickly before the sun winks away. The sun winks away quickly these days, communing lowand quiet as Mother cuts the meat,the liver, hearts and sweet breads.We children chop the wood to feed the fireto roast the bones that we’ll boil to make the broth that will carry us through the cold.
Grandy says this kalter moon will be the harshest yet;we make the blood pudding to curebefore we walk in the twilight,our skins and furs stained and sticky;the air sharp, like metal.We wind the stiffening intestines around the branches of the cedar.The branches of the cedar are where we place these gifts of life, where we sing the songs of welcometo any creature in need of food and warmth—come, take all you can carrytake all you need as we have plentycome take of this life, to feed yours.We lay the leg bones beneath the treeon the frosted ground.
We walk near the angry, black river, the reeds brittle, brown and sparse,taking two haunches to the old grandmother,the haguzussa, with one foot in our cold worldwith its intestine-wrapped limbs,the other in the tree of life with gods.She had no goats this year; she is too old to keep them.But she can still whisper to the bees,gifts us a jar of sweet honey to dip our meat in.
After we return home and scrub the blood from under our nailsI sit by the fire and drift, dream of owls and vulturesvisiting the cedar, eating their fill, flying home to their families.Dream of wolves bringing a leg to their dento crack and lick, the marrow carrying them forwardthrough the darkness. I picture a man and his child slicing through the thick garland to make a stew, bringing a leg hometo pound out the tendon, pound the tendon to cord into thread, to strengthen pants and shirts to keep out the continuous cold.
When I am long in my own winter I will sit under the snow-hushed sky by a fire, blessed by the grand-grand-children of our goats that offered up their lives for us today, and when the fear becomes too much, I will rememberto look instead to answers: When does the water freeze?When do we separate the buck from the flock? When do we ready the knives and saws?
I know even during the coldest moons,with darkness ready to swallow us whole,we are not alone in our fears or means.