ON ST. BRIGID'S FEAST DAY Spring's greening shawl warms winter earth ushers in the season of birth, re-generation. We bind the reeds gathered to weave St. Brigid's blessings around hearth and home. Soon the migrant swallow will return to old haunts kept safe in memory. I think of Liscannor and the swallows nested there the year before at St. Brigid's Holy Well. How wise the mother bird To fashion beginnings where cool waters splash music soft upon the stones, where the glow of hearth fires burn bright in prayers, kindling the light of hope. A light for skies darkened at summer's end by the shadow of swallows preparing to make their way. Fledglings rising in a spray of flight on wings of plenty. Swallow, and all who leave our shore, let stars and sun, the scent of familiar landmarks help you to your wintering places, make fast the map of landscape so that you never forget the path that takes you back. -- Eileen CASEY, orig. from the Midlands, living in Dublin, a freelance journalist, poet and fiction writer.