Poem: We Feel the Call of Years

Our voices are low and sober

Sitting close by a winter fire like the olds used to strange that it’s us now small-talking about sore knees and heart disease but here we are are and there we were.

Once upon our nineteen years rage was all the rage and we held it close wild hair and ragged clothes sneer, shout, and pose If we’re too loud you’re too old.

The poet said Old age should burn and rave at close of day but drink and the cough sent him off before he could test this thesis and learn that it’s not so easy to man the barricades with foggy eyes and trembling hands not so easy to kick over the wall with spider-veined stick legs

Here our voices are low and sober

Speaking brightly of wanton nights past storied debauches d’you remember when you passed out in the snow we figured you were dead

Speaking gladly of love at the last kin, clan, home and hearth we’re so happy that Jill is back for the holidays if just for the weekend

Speaking wearily of old friends now passed that hardest of losses did you hear about Rob? gone sooner than we thought makes you think, for sure

An end and a beginning.

The Ancestors who howled and hunted in the ancient forests when the gods could still be seen and touched who gathered around their fires and told their tales that would become ours they are gone from this earth for centuries and more

Yet they watch us as we approach in dread and awe feeling the call of those years upon years fearful yet yearning for the promise of wildness and wonder that beckons from those who came before

And when this battered human-plagued and blessed world for us fades back to mist and we cross the sea to the lands that are both old and new when we are the Ancestors pray, gods help us that our legacy may be enough and the river of the spirit will run true.

Another poem of a different kind