Lament for the Open Fire

 

We hear a lot today, and rightly so, about the dangers of the open fire. But it set me thinking about the benefits and the memories and the role of the open fire in our lives. Watching flames lowers our blood pressure and allows more oxygen to flow. But there are,of course, those particles that infiltrate the lungs..

So here's a rhymed poem, a sort of lament for the loss of the open fire....

When the hearth is gone where shall we gather

To sing a song, tell tales together?

Watch the embers rise and fall, 

Hear fire's stories short and tall.

Tales of caverns deep within

Tales of ships all set and trim

Rigged to voyage where only we can

Through imagery of fire and fan.

Recalling days of measling shins

From drying out socks and shoes and limbs

Steaming 'til our clothes are dry

A Turkish bath best not to try...

Or toasting bread over open flame

On a fine toothed fork fit for the game

Of holding firm 'til the job is done

Then butter and jam and finger licking fun.

Or sending those letters up to Santa's birds

Gathered on the chimney pot primed for the word

Winging them off to the far away Pole

Where the man himself is waiting to be told.

Or listening through the chimney, while snug inside,

To the howling and the whistling of the wind outside.

Or watching the embers dance as they rise

And pirouette and fall until their demise.

Or the burning of love in a fiery grate

When the love's stopped singing at any rate.

When the hearth is gone where is the flame

To ignite our songs and inspire our tales?

Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Letting You in

Reading a poem often inspires me to write a poem and reading one today about how one poet tries not to think about a past lost love I was struck by the fact that I do exactly the opposite.....

Sometimes in sepia I let you in

a young man in a photograph

raising his hand 

as if to throw a stone

it wasn't a stone

but half a century later

it could have been anything.

Sometimes I let in 

the moment

our eyes met 

and time faltered-

a lens refracting light

bending it to focus

catching us mid frame

releasing us on emergence.

Sometimes it's your voice 

on the other end of the line

giving me a line 

something about football practice 

creating a gravity so strong

I fall through the ground

And sometimes

 the last time

 we are sitting 

 a table between us

your eyes panning beyond

 me, into the past 

or into the future

and me not asking why

Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Michael Gambon reading Yeats

A great Soul has passed. Here is a beautiful reading of the Song of Wandering Aengus by W.B Yeats read by Michael Gambon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_VPtGfsw0

Writing resources

Summer over and it's time to get down to submitting material to publishers. It's really hard to know how to go about this at the best of times but I came across a useful resource list which you may find helpful too.

 https://angelatcarr.wordpress.com/

Photos of Lucca

https://www.discovertuscany.com/lucca/

Catureglio, Tuscany, Italy

 

It would have been a pity to miss all this:

cypress topping Terracotta roofs,

going astray in a tangle of olive grove

lizard and agrimony underfoot

and hedge parsley and hartwort

butterflies skimming your lens.

And higher up, frescoed on the chapel roof,

the Virgin Mother radiating benevolence as she ascends into Heaven

And, beyond her, a soul sister of our very own Sile Na Gig

spouting blessings from a mossy fountain shrine

And under a hedge, facing forward and head intact,

a Child of Prague and a plea to heaven for a rainless wedding day.

I discover that this carved face in stone presiding over a fountain basin is called a mascaron. They were used symbolically to ward off evil spirits. See links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascaron_(architecture)

Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

A Wedding Prayer

 

The Gathering

for Teresa and Rebecca and Sarah

 

On an Italian hillside they gathered

the scent of lemon, the brush of olive branch

the sound of cicada ringing the air.

He had flown over a thousand miles to be there,

to be placed under a laurel hedge

to be petitioned as a century before

at a grandmother’s wedding

and at a mother’s wedding, decades later.

And so they gathered again, this third generation of women,

to ask for fair weather, fair wind and a rainless day

in the shadow of the Apennines, in the dusk, under a Tuscan sky.

Copyright 2017 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Background to the tradition of The Child of Prague statue

https://onefabday.com/child-of-prague/

A Wedding Poem

Written for Eoin and Rebecca on the occasion of their wedding celebration in Tuscany, Italy. 

12th September 2023

Tying the Knot

 

In the time before the mountains she walked barefoot to the place

where one stream crossed another or a well was sunk in grace.

In the time before the mountains he would wait for her there

and someone drew a circle that would encompass the pair.

In the time before the mountains they would step into the space

and, arms extended, clasp hands and declare their embrace.

In the time before the mountains it would happen on a day

deemed gravid with occasion, like Beltane or Lughnasadh.

In the time before the mountains a braided ribbon would extend

from his hand to hers, wrist to wrist, end to end.

Hand fasting is what they called it, tying the knot we say today

from that time before the mountains on this most auspicious day.

 Copyright Cathy Leonard All rights reserved