That Thing You Fear

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Canadian Thanksgiving, Elaine Stirling, flash fiction, incantation, Law of Attraction, like attracts like, nagual, poetry, rune singing, self-importance, self-pity, spontaneity, the old ways, vibrational reality

It was the summer of ’82 when my life fell apart, and I visited Grandma, sat on her porch in Hazelnut Corners, drinking iced tea and watching lightning bugs play catch-me-dare in the twilight.

“What’s that thing you fear, child?”

I was twenty-three, hardly a child, and hoped I made it clear in my response.

She cupped her ear and leaned forward on her squeaky porch swing. “The Reaper cussin’? That’s what scares you?”

“I said, repercussion, Grandma.”

“Well, hell, that’s just hogwash! There ain’t no repercussion, ain’t no Reaper cussin’, except the kind you place in front of your own self like banged-up paint cans to trip over and make a big howly whoop-dee-do for any poor soul who’s close enough to listen.”

I clinked the ice cubes in my tea and awaited what I knew was coming.

Grandma would never call herself a poet, though once she got a rhythm going, you could snap peas and shuck corn using half the energy and a quarter the time. Reverend Hicks said she’d have been a mighty preacher, if it weren’t for that holy injunction against women at a pulpit. But Grandma held no truck with thou-shalt-nots and given a pulpit, would have sent everyone home and turned the church into a B&B.

“Go make joyful noises,” she’d have said. “Let your kids bang pots, do some banging of your own. God knows some of you could use it.”

I wish now that I’d recorded her rune-songs while she was singing them, for rune-songs is what they were. Spontaneous, unbound, her incantations called down the Spirit and sent up her own, spinning out and growing the loop of creation her Creator began. Here, best as I remember, is what else Grandma said in her saucy way, that day we talked about the thing I feared.

Give yourself some
head room, child, grow
a house beside another
house becomes a village
with a garden, ‘nuff
to feed the crops of
young ones sprouting
tow and woolly heads
who chase each other
cross the gullies, nets
and footballs arcing
toward the sunset till
your mothers step
outside and call your
names to come indoors
where clean or rumpled
sheets await with dreams
pressed up like noses
to a candy store—it’s you
the world is looking for
the sweet and salty
liquorice taste of
smacking lips and tongue
your teeth and dreams need
spice to salivate and chew
bite down, enjoy the meats
that tempt while juices flow
let no one come between
you and the joy you’ve
come to sow, spit out
that thing you fear, it
winked out long ago
see for yourself
the lightning bugs
they’ll tell you so.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, everyone!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image from http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com

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Kit, my Kaboodle

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authenticity, brave new leadership, duality, enjoyment, free verse, honouring feelings, humour, individuality, intention, light and dark, lightness of being, my voice is my voice, nagual, parody, poetry, satire, self-importance, self-pity, The Corporate Storyteller, uniqueness, vibrational reality

I have a caboose
at the end of my train
with an imp that enjoys
thumbing noses and moons
at the sun when a new dawn
arises my eyes need to blink
and the imp sees his chance
and he hangs from the tail
where he shouts at the passing
terrain, whatcha you gonna do
now, pretty boy?

My imp’s name is Kit, and I do
try to shush him, though not very
much ‘cause he’s got the touch of
a jester at heart, and my brain with
its lore is a bit of a bore, and my
soul isn’t whole unless I can
laugh at the bridges we burn
and the tracks we lay down
and pretend when we crash
that they weren’t our
own handiwork.

The thing is, we all
have to run on the steam
that we bring, and if mine
blows too hot or too cold in
your face, and yours makes
me yawn, we could still show
some grace—not go stupid nutty
all over the place, when our tracks
must diverge. I have no intention
of leaving sweet Kit at the station
or anywhere else for I love how
how he thinks and he sees and
he laughs—he’s divine. Yes,
Kit, my kaboodle, is mine!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of caboose from http://www.bbcrc.org

Whither, vane?

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ego, Elaine Stirling, habit, indecision, poetry, predictability, projection, reactiveness, rubielo de la Cérida, self-importance, self-reflection, spinning one's wheels, superficiality, vanity, wordplay

Weathervane, you spin and crow
directions of the winds that blow
across my scapes of heart and lust,
but nothing do you know of trust
or what goes on beneath this roof
to set alight the breeze of truth.
And when the weather calms, what
use a cock of iron sitting mute, not
registering sun or dew? Your tail
though carved most fancifully, no sail
can fill if from your inmost will
you cannot grasp a finer skill
or rise beyond incessant vanity,
perfidious and pretty weathervane.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of weathervane from http://www.blackforgeart.co.uk

Triptych

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boundaries, confluence of elements, correspondences of time/space, creative process, disintegration, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, I Ching, Kabbalah, Law of Attraction, nagual, self-importance, self-reflection, Spenserian stanza, The Corporate Storyteller, the Mysteries, triptych, vibrational reality

I

Unplucked, the highest fruit must fall, the Book
of Changes says of you and me, this day
of twenty-three, disintegrating hook
by crook and other piracies that slay
your notions of lukewarm egalité.
All blood is royal blue until it’s spilled,
all secrets that once shocked us fade to gray.
The fleurs de lis you wore upon your cloak
now decorate the oxen’s humble yoke.

II

Thunder, it is said, in winter months hides
deep in mountain passes, where no one can
penetrate; a solitary force bides
she, till heated whispers of lightning’s plan
arouses her. She creeps across the land
sharp-focused, rumbling through the fertile minds
that have no fear of mysteries, she’ll dam
the rest, their wayward tongues she’ll scorch & bind
and leave you chasing shadows till you’re blind.

III

The purple ash outside my house stands tall.
Descendant of Armada’s fleet, he knows
the names and faces of the ones who call,
regardless of the hour, and he throws
the stubborn profligate as food to crows.
Our moments of past symmetry may shine—
don’t know—but polished copper pots don’t grow
a garden or a book, so leave what’s mine
for me to blend until it turns to wine.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Victorian French Dore Bronze Triptych
mirror from http://www.rubylane.com

Crosshairs

Tags

duality, Elaine Stirling, perception, poetry, self-importance

He snipes from a corner
visage with a view, from a 
tower not of ivory but of
melancholy hue;

the quadrants of his
crosshairs split the world
in two and two again; I’ve
been the target of his sights
and, lightly grazed, I know
he seeks to right what
can’t be wronged,

and every time he loads
to fire anew, intelligence
sends out a tremor that
alerts brigades and
cavalcades, a blush
of spies report the
movements and
intentionalities that
wholeness does not
see, and while the
sniper feels assured,
his crosshairs tremble.

We are each of us an
infantry, tin soldiers, washer
women, boys and girls, we play
at hide and seek, and as we flush
the grouse and peasantry from all
we fear to lose, our woods deplete
until at last, as integers, we stand
alone reflected in the center of
a crosshairs not our own.
~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2012