First Fire-

Autumn's chill seeps through the eves of summer.
Blood thickens as frost settles, and the chorus of good king Wenceslas,
From across fall turned fields,
Sounds dim in our ears.
Summer's bounty now laid in wood rick, haystack, and larder,
sit idle,
banked against the winter's cold-
later to be placed on Christmas tables, laid in mangers, and the woodstove-
Tonight at the door Jack Frost has only left his calling card,
if you are wise you know that he will return.
   Greg Brown's album "Dream Cafe" becomes pertinent again with the turning of the leaves, With Christmas, the heralds proclaim the birth of christ, the return of the tomtin, the rail king, and his accomplice the scarecrow.
Tonight-
Summer nearly at it's end
The first fire of the season burns as a testament,
It's warmth a manifestation of a covenant,
a labor and a joy.
It says to us-
That love will sustain us another season,
And that for us-
Love will endure-
 

Cigarette smoke lifts and coils from my right hand, twisting and spiraling in the porch light, I am slightly taken aback by the immensity of it. It's hard to imagine that the whole of it could be condensed into my lungs. Initially I began smoking to emulate my father. I don't begrudge him his smoking, and I have never smoked to excess. One of the earliest memories of my father is of the smell of his woolen sweaters, and the smell of pipe smoke mixed there within; the smell of freshly plained violin tops, and varnish. The memory of his thin hands are as indelibly marked in my mind as were the fingers on his right hand by the tobacco that he smoked.
   But I am grown now, and at times I am surprised maybe by my childishness. When I was young I would pinch loose tobacco leaf from the butler's pantry, from canisters of my father's Drum; and I would pinch it into primitive loosely rolled smokes that I would share with my friends. We never thought to emulate movie stars or the Marlboro man... We only though to emulate the men that we hoped someday to become. These men were far more tangible than the images on billboards; they were our fathers, grandfathers, our uncles, and brothers. They were the men in who's sweaters we had buried our heads, and in who's hands we had found comfort and escape form the limitations of childhood.
 Our mortality to us then was beyond the scope of our imagination. We charged the ramparts of fortified imaginary castles slaying enemies to our left and to our right; our own death as distant too us then as was compassion for the imaginary slain who littered the ground at our feet. We were poster boys for why young men can be convinced to go to war. In our minds we held our ground and defended each other at the Battle Of The Bulge, and in our ration packs would be a pack of lucky strikes.....

Fallow,
now the furrow
the coulter cut's through the ready ground.
Spring time's turnings
headlands turned
once flailed
now moldbord turned,
The  plough cut's through the ready ground.
Hope springs eternal...
Each spring in the ploughing...
Despair is turned under...
and hope is ever renewed.

December 2012

I am fighting the urge to sleep. Days pass as they are apt to do, and little do I notice. I am finding it hard to write, words escape me, remaining elusive in the clutter of days. Three women talked in the living room (as dad slept) of babies, life, loss, and miscarries.
I wish I to had been asleep as well.
I sat ten feet and a wall away, involved in a conversation I was not part of... And yet knew all to well. Even now I don't know what to make of it all.... I would have gone out, left the house and gone to the field... But for fear of creating a void in my wake, letting a cold draft in as I went out the door. Now my father is awake, Brigid and mom carry the conversation, dad's voice is nearly gone these last days, as if he is speaking from another room far away. I can only imagine.
It is a distance between there....
(the place where he has gone)
And here....
(the place where we remain)
That hardly can I fathom..... 
Soon he will pass beyond out sight.   

Maybe........

The rain falls in ribbons

Rhythmic, consistent, chaotic.

To stand in it,

To stand in it, 

in your naked skin-

Is ecstasy.

Each drop

       Like love

Sharp and unrelenting,

How long?

How long could you endure a lover’s touch

Before you turn in your sleep toward her?

How long could you endure the presence of god?

Before you were driven mad?

And in your sleep

Touched so…

Which way would you turn?

The rain like a child’s cry in the night,

You curse the hour

As the rain, like ribbons

Seeps down across the broad if your back,

And pulls you from your sleep.

Love,

for a time,

like the rain,

avoids the small of your spine.

And in the beginning

Those places the rain does not touch-

You think of as your own.

But love,

Like the rain,

Creeps,

Like ribbons,

Across your whole being.

And now that place in your being…

No longer belonging to you

But to her…

Belonging to a needy child lonely in the night.

Rise now,

Turning to her your accomplice,

Turning toward him your masterpiece-

With all of your frustration,

With all of your fear,

Rise

To stand naked in the rain-

                        Endure love as long as you are- 

Not sure about this one-

She-

A rosary of berries.

Her fingers

Juice stained and sweet.

I converse with her at the spring.

I drink rain water

Pooled

From the nape of her neck.

December

Bees wick nectar from her skin,

They anoint her lips with honey-

Shelter me from the winter,

And I will build you a house,

With seven Chimneys,

And a fire in every room.

Warm me, when I am cold

And I will cloth you in the winter.

For your feet

Seal skins.

For your middle

Tanned hide of dear.

For your shoulders

The fur of bears.

Woman of the hen house

Woman of the hearth fire

Flock and fold

Dear one

Dear one

Dear on of my heart.

Bare for me my child

And in return

As life springs forth from you

In spring, I will coax life from the ground

And in thanks and in supplication-

I will bear home those fruits to you. 

Turn us loose-

My mind

Like a button drawer.

There

Where things are compiled

You will find me-

There amongst the string, and garden clippers,

The keys, broken Swiss army knives,

There amongst the tape measures and tacks,

There amongst the needles and thread,

The barbed hooks,

I am.

My mind is the canyons of my youth…

Where we rode the norths,

Like a school yard.

Our colts brash and impatient

Their breath billowed like incense in the autumn air.

Like prayers-

“turn us loose” they said

And we like them were wild.

“Turn us loose” they said

Turn us loose to slide

Haunches slide

Theirs and mine

Down through the breaks,

As quarters and lose change

Shale and skree 

Slide before us

“Turn us loose” we said

 I like them

And them like me-

            Were wild.