Hearth-Song
“Then Wisdom unlocked her word-hoard again,
sang her own truths and spoke thus.”*
How I long for the joy of fellowship
In the halls of my heart—
To hear the poets sing,
Filling my hearth with sweet dream-craft,
To bask between the other bench-sitters,
Warm and safe
As the storm howls outside the door.
For in the dark forests of my brain,
Monsters roam and ravage my thoughts,
Twisting them ‘til they become
Monsters themselves—
Doomed to be lone-walkers,
Disconnected from wisdom
And wandering in woe.
Flee not from me, friends,
In the halls of my heart.
Nestle nearer the fire
And see its warmth gleaming
On the golden rings you wear—
Tokens of friendship,
Tales of glory taken together.
For sad is the man who sings alone
As one sailing on dark waters;
The bitter blast of wind may o’erturn
His little life-raft, leaving him
Ship-wrecked and wretched.
So let us feast together,
Heart-friends, and hearth-companions,
Makers of music and tellers of tales.
As the years since my birth fly by
Like birds before nightfall,
You brighten my spirit
With sparks of heaven-fire.
* From “The Metres of Boethius,” Metre 6, II. 1-2, translated from Latin to Old English c. 890 AD.
Old English Word-guide:
Dream-craft: music
Bench-sitter: a fellow companion in the hall
Lone-walker: loner, one exiled
Mom of ten Anna Eastland is the author of unexpected blossoming a journey of grief and hope, and has contributed to various anthologies including Love Rebel: Reclaiming Motherhood, Canadian Converts II, Never-ending Love: Sharing Stories, Prayers and Comfort for Miscarriage and Infant Loss, Composed, and Habitations Vol.II. She was chosen as a librettist for The Lament’s Project by soprano Ai Horton, who transformed Anna’s babyloss poem “Carry Me” into a song of lament accompanied by harp.
Amethyst Review 
Another beautiful poem by the lovely and lovable Anna Eastland.
If writing poetry seems hard to do; which it can be,
Anna Eastland does work hard, but does all of this hard work: the conceptual dreaming and considering, the writing and the rewriting, the editing and the polishing, and on and on, while overflowing with a sort of thoughtful, rapturous joy. Her poems tend to be quite farseeing; filled with quite a deep sense of knowing about what she writes her poems about. And like all good poets, she leaves many beautiful and clever alliterative words on the surface that so subtly and eloquently draw you into the deeper depths where she always leaves treasures to find.
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