Smooring the Hearth
‘Bank the fire down, my friend,before going to bed.’
A poem about the inbreath of midwinter, the embers of the year, and tending the hearth.
LISTEN TO THE POEM READ BY THE POET
Smooring the Hearth
The clock ticks towards
the midnight chimes.
The sands of the year drain away.
Sip your anaesthetic,
reflect upon all that has gone,
the deeds un/done, the words un/said.
Bank the fire down, my friend,
before going to bed.
The memories glow and fade
like the coal, slow time
locked in its fossil heart.
Each a dream, once cherished,
come morn, a pail of dust
to be scattered on the dormant earth.
The day a squall of rain,
the nights come as fast.
The solsticed sun instructs us
to hiatus, to put down our tools.
Endless struggle, surrender arms,
as the Christmas ceasefire commences.
For a while we no longer
have to be anything.
Merely drop down into our being.
It is okay, friend, we can stop buying.
We can stop pretending to be nice,
so desperate to be loved back,
to be popular. For surely,
this is the measure of success.
That, and how much you own.
What you can show off to visitors,
the guests guessing your soul
from what’s on your shelves.
Shallow the depths of society’s
criteria. As though our lives
are no more than a lifestyle magazine,
a trending meme.
The fire dies down,
and what is discarded
slips through the bars of the grate.
Leaving the sine qua non of embers –
the truth only found
at the eleventh hour,
say, on the eve of execution,
when we face the cold, naked fact
of our mortality, our swift sparrow-flight
the length of a mead-hall.
Yet still, we bank the fire down –
thanking the warmth and light it has
bestowed, its borrowed grace –
in the hope that come dawn,
the last star can rekindle
our wintering king,
before it winks out.
Copyright (c) Kevan Manwaring, 2014
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