the gentle art of making fire

poem for We Write Poems, prompt #48, the art of making fire

the gentle art of making fire

rub any two words together.
add salts, same as soil does.
imagine dance.
imagine molecules.
imagine no choice.  falling free.
whisper desire into ears of wheat.
be father like stone.  a seed.
be mother like rain.  illuminate.
imagine breathing sky.
imagine flood.
imagine tongue touching flint.
swim canyon like silt, chasing gravity.
sing fingers on butter face.
imagine children in pockets asleep.
imagine dreams like fruit then ripe.
imagine bare feet on a gravel bed.
milking sparks from summer soles.
flames were shadows first.
imagine the mouth of time.
the rakish nature of prayer.
splashing bright.  don’t explain.
say little.  ignite.
the way poems are coincident,
related to smoke.

neil reid © march 2011

6 April 2011 commentary:
I love to nibble at the edges of the real world dance of physics and chemistry (some say the natural laws of this reality we inhabit). Even to prepare for a poem by making sincere study of those “laws”; what do we know about the process involved. Maybe some of that will becomes bones within the poem, or maybe instead the first footfalls before imagination takes the helm, goes its’ own way down the road. Either way is fine by me.

I know (maybe it’s more belief) we are all deeply inside the process, like “fire” here for this poem and prompt. But I also want to feel at a visceral level the truth of such understandings, to know in my blood that it is so. That’s the connectedness I look for anyway. And I think there’s more to learn than only the physics of process, more than just the mechanical, but rather, how all that intimately relates to how we see and feel, how we participate in life.

I think science at root is poetic. I think truth at root is poetic.

All reasons enough to look and play this way.

As you might notice, the poem for me came first, and then by desire to see what else might come, the prompt for We Write Poems, so as to share this idea and prompt. We are all here, burning every day, consuming the very fabric of our world. I’ll hope what writers joined in this prompt find something interesting for themselves, maybe images seen now just for the very first time! ~neil

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fire and bright

fire and bright

what fits within the globe the bowl the basket?
sheep shorn wool, piled fleece, sacrifice.
the boat lays low in the water, roosting berth,
and who can say, rising or falling, by what eye?
how many limbs will the socket allow, scattering
black sky heaven and red lace sun.
hold your open rising arms broad like stars
and even then the jaw is agape, turned north
transfixed, transformed, terabytes on lips,
honey spun roses scented amber sweet.
heap on words, old bones with secret marrow inside.
scrape the ravens off their wire perch, electricity
roams inside a beak. gather webs for a nest.

high in the arbor mother builds her bowl
within the shelter of green grape leaves,
half the universe, invisible. eggs reflect
the shape, the way life holds itself.
all things made of glass.
fire and bright desire inside.

neil reid © january 2011

[commentary] Responsive free form to watching a video program about the glass artist, Dale Chilhuly, and in particular his presentation, “Fire and Light”. Every form he creates is a new understanding of shape and color, as well how sight responds. Then the fragile likewise truth of a bird’s nest atop the grape arbor in my backyard.

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artist please talk with me

artist please talk with me

(artist please talk with me) (surely it isn’t all like this)

Chance encounter. Woman walks into my store. Bright bones.

An artist she says. Whatever did we first talk about that led to this?

She once, says she, set her bed on fire!

(match in hand) Imagine! Imagine flames!

No, not crazy (I think) (not burning her house down), more

by what wasn’t said than was. Sculpture by art by fire (implied).

I believed. Same as I believe the sky.

Now what sort of (person) (artist) sets their bed on fire?

I am unquenched curious! (no frail intent of paint)

Just imagine! Here’s the safest place in all your world.

Forget symbolism. Do meanings combust with sheets?

Erase beliefs you thought you understood. (doubt uplifted)

Where do you sleep tonight? (trivial like toast)

What a thing to burn your bed! For all that says and doesn’t.

Burning bed says start drawing again.

Blind map might suggest anything next! (even albatross)

(land untouched, months more than days!)

Yet too brief as time (or she) would allow. She walks away.

Some artists don’t like to talk too much.

(Suppose that’s why I write with a pen.) (instead of flame)

(another bright white page)

neil reid © september 2010

neil reid © september 2010

Chance encounter (part three). Thanks to a friend, Elizabeth by name. Words fall out when she writes. More than just the poems she writes. Maybe she doesn’t intend that result. But it happens anyway. Good trick, however it’s done. Like this one here. Sometimes I think words just talk to words. And we’re just here, listening. She does that too. Lucky me.

Oh, and in case you wondered, the woman here is real, and perfectly as normal as any of us (I suppose) and she did burn her bed. And I still don’t know exactly why her choice came that way. And still stand in awe of that singular moment of her making. I see her from time to time and always appreciate her grace.

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Uvas canyon fire

Uvas canyon fire

 

 

Smoke settles low in wrinkled valleys

reluctant to depart the sweet sage cradle

     where first blossom newly arose.

 

One prayer of oak and brush says,

     take me into blue sky.

 

Today the creeks folded, and all dreaming

said simply, I have no name in this dawn.

 

Said, I have found this way and go.

 

From where the men stood mid-road,

their cars in hesitant rest on the narrow

shoulders of the country road, back

from there, across a small angled bridge,

there, I too became still – and listened.

 

It was a perfect silence.

 

It could easily be mistaken for someplace else,

     yet beyond one ridge, maybe another,

     something wonderous was thumping,

     thumping, wanting to come close.

 

2002 © Neil Reid

 

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