Smooring the Hearth
Solstice Sunset
Resisting night’s gravity
I rise to the Heavens,
clay on boots,
dusk at my heels,
slipping up to the
lonely grove on the brow,
where a year ago,
we planted a circle of hope.
Now I stand alone
in silent vigil.
Aurora of the day
sliding away, behind
Rodborough’s bear shoulders.
It is a satisfying death –
a great actor’s swansong.
A star born for this moment.
The lights fade, and, on cue,
another nova.
No desecrating ruckus
at a stone circle is needed
to mark this annual valediction – leave
the vandals to their
trilithon abuse and stoned selfies.
I have no need of the Am-dram
of dodgy rituals,
the posturing of ill-cast hierophants.
My gaze is for the sun alone.
Quietly, I say goodbye.
Burning News
The old year
is an empty grate,
solstice-black and cold
as a spurned lover’s heart.
Waiting to be filled with
kindling – scrunched news,
or the celebrity tittle-tattle
that passes for it
these days,
fat splinters of shattered tree,
glottal stops of coal,
black bile of angry mines,
the simmering earth
beneath our feet. Its fury
on slow-burn. The fuse of
ancient forests sizzle.
Coal scuttle, clatter and clinker.
With the rasp of a match,
paper curls, catching flame –
spreading like hungry gossip.
Inflammatory rumours
blaze into headlines of fire,
snagging our gaze.
We try to turn away,
but too late.
We’re hypnotized.
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
vanishing with the night.
Poems copyright Kevan Manwaring 2014
