Poem for Gnà by Dave Shortt
"Frigg sends her on her errands. She has a horse that runs through the air and over the sea called Hoof-Flourisher.... From Gnà's name what soars high is called towering." —Prose Edda
Thor, give us today our non-violent hammer
azure windows in the clouds & thunder
because we don't understand beauty
& if Freija were ever to unchristen the body
so the wind created havoc with fair elections—
then in REMs a new candidate would appear
when the last forest was left standing
as weather reports interrupted the wars
& the dainty brains of pheasants
hiding in the disappointing fields
became the evening target
while the equinoxes were changing
into windbreaks at the end of corn rows
& husbandings of blasting hydrogen
on the sun's lee side
there, a deva naive to earth's mealtimes
emerges smokelessly from the nuclear powers
of the fusionary Playfather,
her breasts rivalling the distances of Sol,
her looks of course a mask
Thor's busy trying to topple
while Hoof-Flourisher carries her
into the closenesses of solstices
if it be Gnà
the wind has erased jealousy
along her path from the sun
will the night come
when she usurps her servitude?
or her life is in errand
to the matronly soil's wishes,
she is the earthworm
turning in the mother's heart,
clouds blush
at any allusions to favoritism
in her presence
then they return
into the vaguest grays,
the annunciatory beginnings
where she met her horse
racing in mists of the world's
ineffable childhood
neither oxidations of the heart's memories
or a cuckoo's remarks in witness
of Midgard's x-rated scenery
can forestall deliverance through the open sky
of the messages she carries from Sol
(running out of light
will the cold front pass
into & through
this entire evening of her body?
grabbing onto the moon like clothing,
a sliver of fortune
tethering her horse as she sets
into that
quickly obliterated in laughter of fakir Loki
whose 8-legged stud on earth
keeps galloping into midnight
where one star was left for him to graze on
satiating his great speed
with momentary spiderhood)