Fire Triptych II
 
Soul Fire
 

Whose voice is this?
It seems a poet gives me tongue
Flickering along the edge of cold rock's fracturing
whose voice is raw with ash from screaming in the wind
across the blasted plains
of living earth.

This grave outpouring
of the molten soul,
tumbling the boulders of unchanging want
dissolves the dark caverns of the core
                               of mother earth:
       and her desire,
       her shadow,
       and her life
       am I

wellsprings of liquid fire in boiling sea,
and plumes of hissing
               plunge the firmament,
I scorch and scour the once sweet breezes
               of your mind
I plough this causeway of desire
               into the sea of longing
shock from the joints and sinews
               of your once gentle
                               earth

and plummet the heavens,
               seek to pierce the answering lightning
of the long lost
       aching sky

here like a shadow of the sun who blossom births her
                       from her own within
I roil and warm my baby brother still entombed
                       in this unended womb
while I search rock vein perforate with liquid silver
and alive with golden tears
               and the ripped sanctity
               of heaven's grave.

What do you want, boy?
       I give you my heart, my love, my very being,
       and I am consumed by it.
 

       Those strangers had it right,
               though their methods were
                somewhat
                              unnatural.

Who feeds the sun, who can fill up the ocean of his warmth,
       replenish the unmaterial, the generosity
                               with which he fills his world?
       Least of all by offering of material heart
                               or heart's blood beating.

And yet..
       Even without the golden knife,
       the black obsidian,
       they knew,
               somehow,
it is the living heart that's needed:
       and all else fades, into its place
       and there remains
               to wait for us,
                       or feed another.
 

The sun is warm,
       and every warm breath minishes his weight
        to increase ours.
You do not see this,
        what is it to you
       that in a million years from now
                he will be cold and still?
       perhaps. Perhaps gone inward
        in a flare, a great white wild
               defiance.

That's not self giving or any such nobility..
       It is the way of him,
       giving warmth out of his nature,
       as does the earth herself.

               We all give it,
       our lives to each other:
       from the spindle of the world
       to the axis of the cosmos
                       Fire to each other.
Feed each other first.
 

When you raised Papa, did you think perhaps Atlantis sank?
     She is one being, not a multitude;
       seated upon your sleeping mat,
       your knees slide down. When sea rolls back
               wind sinks.
     Hot air rises, so that Papa spins,
       out of the sea of light,
               raises the winds..

You say the sea's unscarred
       yet
       clear across the world-sea lies the seam,
       Land's end to Spirit's bay,
       Mana'an folding himself upon himself,
       and the great Spirit of the air,
       twists and turns, echoes yet the sea.

Even so what you call 'physical'
                       the earth herself, 
                       threaded and currented as body is
       by muscle and by vein.
You can't pull them apart, and still have life,
       but you can trace them with your mind
       being to inner being,
               deep calling 
               from within the deep
       and still live life
                abundantly.

So, 
        You got your way.

                       We can't do your magic?
       I do believe you're right.
 
 

(C) Copyright 1997
ALYS
All Rights Reserved