SEQUOIA
An alternative love poem
A controlled burn—also known as back burning—clears everything in its path.
When wisely calculated, it can renew all through the brilliant ferocity of fire.
Trees dancing flaming insanity light up the night sky.
Everything old on the forest floor becomes fuel
for the carefree wanderlust of red and orange.
The night sky screams as billows of smoke set sail;
gray-black waves exhaling into the moon’s starlight ocean,
clouds jostling to hold their own against the hot-faced intruder.
*
Though I did not calculate well the burning that brought you to me
I did sniff the winds of change and following a wild impulse,
drew a ragged breath, lit a match, and threw it down.
Another match I threw, not caring what took fire.
Ragged breath turned to scorched sound,
white heat laying waste the shell of all
patient waiting, proper praying, false illuminating.
No pretty contemplation this;
only pure agony shrieking light.
Gasping on hands and knees, I choke and let go,
vomiting strangled metaphors of freedom and beauty
and what it means to be at peace in this world.
Gutturally chanting, my voice erupts volcanic, demanding
that what was torn from me like stitches from a still raw wound be returned.
How it comes I care not.
But I swear by all that is wretched and holy that I will light the sky up
this time with my flesh and bone if the earth of my life does not
quake awake
to pure flowering green
NOW.
Tongue burning, eyebrows singed, naked skin blistering,
I listen as the wind blows still.
What pain, age, and this wild night has not burned from me crackles and is gone.
Lying naked and alone, I sleep
and dream of you.
*
A controlled burn—also known as back burning—clears everything in its path.
When wisely calculated it can renew all through the brilliant ferocity of fire.
It is said that some seeds, like the seed of the great Sequoia,
remain dormant until broken down by fire.
This to tell you that such burning is purposeful.
This to tell you that grace exists.
~
Sequoia was first published in The Furious Gazelle 06/10/2014
Busy at his workbench, long form stooped, eyes narrowed,
he sands the damaged wood.
A child’s rocking chair,dark rich walnut intricately carved with care long years ago
for the daughter whose birth stopped her mother’s life;
that child now grown and gone
and who cares where.
Why this sunny morning?Why this need to repair that which was made for love so long ago
only to be discarded?
Shaving his thumb across the freshly sanded wood, he swears,
lights a cigarette with yellowed fingers,
stands to stretch his tall frame.
Across the room, covered in dust,
his father's violin lies lonely.Crossing the room in two long strides, he picks up the bow
rosens it with trembling fingers.
Tapping his boot to set the time,
he sets fiddle on collarbone
and begins to play.
A reel spins through the airdust motes dancing in the morning light.
Suddenly the bitter web wrapped around his heart tears,
and time is no more measured by mourning
but by the reel and the remembrance
of his daughter’s first cry.
Dedicated to my musician grandfather, Joseph Balfour, and to Glen Sorestad, whose poem ‘Ancestral Dance’ has stayed with me for decades.
An earlier draft of this poem was published in Bread 'n Molasses on June 24, 2013
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