Fired into Life
Well, this might be interpreted as a poem about reincarnation. But really, it’s the process I go through every morning before I make it to work.
We are fired into life with an urgent longing. -Cloud of Unknowing
Spun out from that great ball of blue yarn,
I catch a trailing thread.
Winding it, braiding it around my wrist,
I knot the end, and snip it off.
The free end makes magnificent soundless waves,
and slowly flattens as the blue ball spins it back to itself.
And I fall, and I land, attenuated.
There are others here,
fired out of life by some urgent longing,
now entombed in something like steatite.
Still others sit cross-legged,
almost floating,
clutching handfuls of something like hope.
I’m six times lighter here.
And on this lesser light,
have the time to train my eyes to look directly into the sun.
I know if I turn I will see Centaurus,
and am tempted.
But my piece of braided blue string,
recalls for me Eros and Isthmus,
where nearness and distance dwell.
And I wait with these newly blinded eyes,
to be fired back in.
Yet my God is from of old, working salvation in the earth. -Hebrew poet
,
From what I read it seems that you work on the moon. How unique! Bring back as much Isthmus to earth as you can after a day’s labor.
How do you always know?
In an hour, I play my first show on the road. I’m in Kitchener and I’m the opening act for a country band. So here I sit in the hotel room, folding each of my songs gently, waiting to be fired in.
Here we go…