A sort of story from the book of life
The fire burnt for hours
low haze of acrid smoke flowed druggedly into ditches
and seeped through the hedgerows
even the sparrows were coughing,
a heavy mist dampening the October day
merging with the trailing smoke
but not dampening the hunger of the flames.
I cleared the land
I cut the bushes down whose blooming days
have been forgotten now
and made a way for better things to come.
The lilac trees about the house
had grown so tall their smell was only
for the birds and bees
and no lilac-flowers could be cut
and placed on the white table linen.
No lilac blooms candied for summer's birthday cakes.
So out came the cutting chain
and soon the fawn-colored stems
were down and angled madly in all directions.
I dragged them by their stems
to where the fire glowed, hungry still.
I laid them reverently across the middle of the pyre
feeling slightly sick at heart.
To perform the sacrilege of burning lilac trees
one needs the guts of steel
and be inured against the loss of bloom in spring.
An unlilacked spring might in a way
be like a birdless summer morn.
(Please don't tell me what I know:
cut it and it will regain it's flow!)
I stood apart and watched the flames
catch the last golden leaves and crackle
and then I saw another thing
a gleam that caught my eye
a diamond glittering off and on;
each stem though far away from the burning fire
dripped tear on tear
affirming my miserable mood,
panging my already stricken conscience.
And then the sun broke through the clouds,
just then, and the dark autumnal day
was lavished over with a shower of emeralds and rubies
of amethyst sheens and opal blues
and the smoke was now a happy tribute
to the flaming sun.
The lightening insight,
the sudden shift in point of view,
I did not make a funeral pyre at all
I celebrated the sun unwittingly
by giving back
a million captured rays,
webbed in lilac stems and bracken ferns
caught in wood and strung out in reeds and brush.
I poured the moisture of the lifesap back
into the flow of the perennial stream
and freed the eternal energy
to come and consumate again
that happy marriage of light and dew
called spring.
So the October haze
was punctured through
with joyful anticipation
and the Lilac tree was burning,
kindly now,
like incense to the sky.
Poetry by Teddy Donobauer
Read 521 times
Written on 2007-07-03 at 09:26
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I burned the Lilac Tree
The fire burnt for hours
low haze of acrid smoke flowed druggedly into ditches
and seeped through the hedgerows
even the sparrows were coughing,
a heavy mist dampening the October day
merging with the trailing smoke
but not dampening the hunger of the flames.
I cleared the land
I cut the bushes down whose blooming days
have been forgotten now
and made a way for better things to come.
The lilac trees about the house
had grown so tall their smell was only
for the birds and bees
and no lilac-flowers could be cut
and placed on the white table linen.
No lilac blooms candied for summer's birthday cakes.
So out came the cutting chain
and soon the fawn-colored stems
were down and angled madly in all directions.
I dragged them by their stems
to where the fire glowed, hungry still.
I laid them reverently across the middle of the pyre
feeling slightly sick at heart.
To perform the sacrilege of burning lilac trees
one needs the guts of steel
and be inured against the loss of bloom in spring.
An unlilacked spring might in a way
be like a birdless summer morn.
(Please don't tell me what I know:
cut it and it will regain it's flow!)
I stood apart and watched the flames
catch the last golden leaves and crackle
and then I saw another thing
a gleam that caught my eye
a diamond glittering off and on;
each stem though far away from the burning fire
dripped tear on tear
affirming my miserable mood,
panging my already stricken conscience.
And then the sun broke through the clouds,
just then, and the dark autumnal day
was lavished over with a shower of emeralds and rubies
of amethyst sheens and opal blues
and the smoke was now a happy tribute
to the flaming sun.
The lightening insight,
the sudden shift in point of view,
I did not make a funeral pyre at all
I celebrated the sun unwittingly
by giving back
a million captured rays,
webbed in lilac stems and bracken ferns
caught in wood and strung out in reeds and brush.
I poured the moisture of the lifesap back
into the flow of the perennial stream
and freed the eternal energy
to come and consumate again
that happy marriage of light and dew
called spring.
So the October haze
was punctured through
with joyful anticipation
and the Lilac tree was burning,
kindly now,
like incense to the sky.
Poetry by Teddy Donobauer
Read 521 times
Written on 2007-07-03 at 09:26
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
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