It's Still Life

Yggdrasil’s Ash

For eight days seers of sun,
and equal nights by frost,
Young Odin dwelt with venom drops
of a serpent’s back.

Then his flesh set upon by fire,
one lit to right,
one to left.
No food. No water was he offered.

And when a hart saw the harm been done
it bit into a branch of the Yggdrasil Ash,
and the hart’s horns fell to ground
waters rising to fill them full,

and Young Odin quenched his throat
and felled the flame, and the holy waters
of Mims Well boiled as the hart
lay dying strewn with spears.

And Sköll the Wolf stood
at the Western Door, watched the crimes
of tooth and mans’ half drawn scabbard,
a hand on hilt, a warrior felled, and killed.

Holy gates and guiltless sin,
of nine worlds of thunder roared,
and Yggdrasil’s three roots made ways
through Mims Well, and into lands

of giants, trolls and gods, and Hel.
Revenge and cauldrons, a hammer and four oxen,
venom dales and five-hundred floors
with five-hundred doors.

And Freyja’s locked the doors to Valhalla.

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Yggdrasil: (igg.dra.sil / ˈig-drə-ˌsil) an immense, central sacred tree. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds.
Valhall/ Valhalla: anglicised name for Old Norse: Valhǫll (“hall of the slain”) located in Asgard.
Freyja: goddess of love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, and gold
Ymir: a giant and first being created from drops of water, representing chaos
Odin: The god of war and dead, ruler of Valhalla. Associated with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, war, battle, victory, sorcery, poetry and frenzy, husband of Frigg.
Mótsognir: created from Ymir’s blood and bone, Lord of Dwarfs
Vala: the Seeress and sorceress of the Völuspá epic, she was resurrected by Odin 

Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Imagery and poems ©Misky 2023.