Ten Poems
Between Fire & Fear

by c.d.r. ireland

 

Fire

Everything slows down while watching a flame flicker
Every dream ever dreamed can be found
in it’s undulating glory
Each flash, each curve and colour contains a million stories
Influencing every painters’ picture

Legend is, fire was given to us by the Gods’
Perhaps to show us, an all consuming hunger and power
To pull dull minds beyond survival by the hour
with visions of the future in the flames on burning logs

I would guess fire’s flame has flickered in every eye
Danced there with reflections of earth and sky
We are so alike, beautiful and dangerous until we die
To magically return and flicker in yet another’s eye

* * * * * * * * * *

This Poets Window

I can spend hours at a window or weeks working a poem
I am mystic, poet, dreamer, doing my work alone
Are we not all alone with this thing called a brain?
Trying to see knowledge in life's receding flames
We attempt to control our sovereign salves
I drift off when I should be pushing a button of turning a valve
I'm being me when I should be scheming for money
Alas the words are flowing and the morning is sunny
So I shall sit in the Sun and tell you that I am a dreamer
When I write there is a mystic glimmer
At the window aA Grackle
Stark, dark beauty pierces me with yellow eyes
Coffee faced, I sit in the window
Watching him as he watches me
From outside

* * * * * * * * * *

A Chant

I was
I am
I will be
The Sun
The Earth
The tree
All nature
All sky
All me
Four seasons
Three mysteries
Two genders
Bird songs
Brain magic
Tough and tender
Peace
Love
Water
Our immortality
Our duality
Our reality
The sacred
The unknowable
The poetry

* * * * * * * * * *

Arcadia

Northland cold this morning,
all the windows are frosty
A crescent sliver in a blue sky as I make my coffee
This century cottage creeks and moans
My neck crunches,
I tell the old place
You are not alone

I can hear the fridge and the clock
Outside, Blue jays squawk
The Nuthatch at the feeder perches upside-down
Fresh out from under the trees snow white gown
The light touch of peace settles upon me
I thank all the powers who gave me a life
in the country

My children are almost grown
My lover and I will soon live alone
I'm thinking about Arcadia and the underground stream
How in the reality of the present I live the dream

* * * * * * * * * *
The Web

The front porch framed view is of a receding road
A corner anchored cobwebs,
silver sunlit symmetry catches my eye
My mind struggles free to land on the hydro wires,
vibrating with their metered load
Then, to the invisible webs that fill the sky
Past, Present, Future, all come to me
Web's in a timeless, trembling tangle
Stretching, breaking and re-attaching to eternity
Only visible from this porch, this angle
Timeless thought skittered across my cobweb mind
Something at my very vortex vibrated
My thoughts had circled the universe
to hit me from behind
I sat mesmerized by the beauty and depth
of the reverie this cobweb initiated

* * * * * * * * * *

Warning

I worship in the forest and run the ridges
Crisscross life's unbearable bridges
Stand in the valley filled with abandoned cars
and discarded fridges
I have come to warn you

Today you can see the air and feel it in your chest
No clearing winds out of the west
From every plant and animal
there are rumours of death
I have come to warn you

Evil stands preaching in a taylor-made suit
Selling his religion like watered-down soup
Turn your back, go to the forest and regroup
I have come to warn you

Earth, water, air, fouled by the excrement
of greed and desire
Someone separated Man from Nature
Nature from God
Someone was a liar
I have come to warn you

Stop industrial pollution
Cutting down all the forests will be our destruction
The reality of our selves " in" nature
Will lead to a clearer vision
I have come to warn you


* * * * * * * * * *

A Moss Covered Log

The moss covered log on the forest floor
So beautiful, looks like a moss covered man
As I stare at its lush growth I can't ignore the thought
Lie here, die here, become the moss covered shape of a man
No one would have to know about the moss covered shape
on the forest floor
Time tames trees to lumps where moss grows
Like the timing of waves and grinds boulders
into sand on a distant shore
I know why green is a sacred colour
It's because of the moss, that covers all in the end
Green calls out about the survival of nature
When all is lost, some green will save
the circle on a lonely river bend
The circle will spin
The universe will again await the miracle of life
Perhaps a different body to keep the brain
or a way to escape without a knife
From over there or up close the moss covered
log can capture me
On my knees surrounded by ghosts
all enthralled by the moss that encircles me

* * * * * * * * * *

Truth Against The World

There are skeletons in the closet
and secrets to be concealed
Could it be dishonesty that keeps our lips sealed?
Bottle it up to hide upon a brain shelf
But the truth is the truth
you must admit it to yourself

Wisdom wears the self thin
Knowledge comes flooding in
The trees whisper, love me, I will love you
All things in the earth and the air, know it's true
Fear not the truth, there are no secrets
except the truth, have no regrets

A grove of trees will soothe your fears
Your soul becomes a phoenix in the sky blue tear
The skeletons out of the closet
The truth will be revealed
Now you are a flower in a Sun filled field
A pebble on the beach
a fish in the ocean
Now lured by the light of pure emotion

* * * * * * * * * *

Adams Baton

Adam said "Life is beautiful, people.. no good for shit"
Auschwitz survivor truth filled words
Drinking vodka straight, in a blur we sit
Talking in riddles, eating cheddar curds

"No money, no funny, no whiskey, no dance"
Diamonds, diamonds, in the ashes
A thousand words in a frightened glance
In time the fit passes

Tip the bottle, talk about his stuffed animals
The wood cannon pointed at the German cottage
across the bay
In horror the drunken Gentile plays it casual
The sting of truth left me nothing to say

We drank until we could not talk
In silence we drank on
Until truth turned to rock and
rolling out the door disappeared in a mist shrouded dawn
A bizarre relay with a macabre baton
Passed to me, empty, racing to fill my cup
Older, I have certain histories to draw upon
The courage to bring it up
(written on the 60th aniv. of the liberation of Auschwitz)

* * * * * * * * * *

Temptation Man

Just out of the womb,
I was tempted by the earth
Before that, my impending birth
For a short time temptation was me
Certain temptations were too costly

Temptation offers a quench for a cerebral thirst
Perhaps, a her to him or a him to her
He to he , her to her
There's no temptation like that primeal stir

This commercialized, greed driven world
knows all about temptation
Every product causes instant ejaculation
We sell youth in a jar, beauty in a can
sexy booze, and other vicarious pleasures
Behind every product an undiscovered treasure

Tempt me baby
Insult
Assault
Smother me
Overload my sensory perception completely
Purge temptation out of my psychology

* * * * * * * * * *

Weather

Talking about the weather is a nervous response
A shallow form of communication that
has served me well, more than once
As it did upon this occasion

Hendew wasn't 40 yet, but he was dying"
Told me he had a wine bottle stuck in his throat
He took it all smiling, not crying
Stuck a needle in his IV. and cracked jokes

I shivered all over watching the booze blitz his IV.
My eye, captured by his hand as it floated
to the bed like a feather
I thought about the possibility of
my own body's disloyalty
Sat quietly as we talked about the weather

The weather was tolerable at the time
Talk started the ice to melt
I remembered the man who had made me laugh
with his pantomimes
His funny, quick brain, that no one could help

I was much younger then
Talking weather wasted time to me
Yet today as I took up my pen
Talking weather came flooding back to me

* * * * * * * * * *

Fear

Sitting in on ancestors chair
Comfortable
The Sun shining through the window
A bird singing outside, clear and simple
My pipe making dreamed filled patterns in the air

My world, my country, my family, my chair
The real me very close, yet unreadable
A self- centered revelry
Stretched on a painters easel
Bizarre and kaleidoscopic colourful
This is what scares me the most
My self, my real self, too close



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More of "Charles Ireland's Rustic Ramblings"
will be featured here soon, including
" Haywagons & Steelworms" (pub.1973)

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