The Great Fires
Close your eyes, and through their lids see the light of the amber moon.
Close your eyes, and through their lids see the light of the amber moon.
A veil of smoke has drawn across the province and settled into your home.
Puff the steam from your nose, hoof the ground and prepare, there is nowhere to run but ahead. There is no turning back to the larch where the does have dropped young, and you just may become the last heir.
Flames lick at the woods, at the moss, at your river.
The creatures cry out for relief and for death.
All fall before the great fires.
Run, buck.
Run.
About the Creator
Lark Hanshan
A quiet West Coast observer. Writing a sentence onto a blank page and letting what comes next do what it must.
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A Flower Song
Apparently the Aztecs, Toltecs, Chichimecs and other Mexica were crazy about poetry. Despite the book-burning, slaughter, and epidemics that characterized the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the empires of Mexico, some hundreds of poems from the height of their tradition come down to us in Classical Nahuatl, preserved by Nahua and Spanish scholars of the 16th century. One of the most famous poets, Nezahualcoyotl, was a sage-king who opposed the cult of human sacrifice associated with Tezcatlipoca, God of the Smoking Mirror, and favored Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. Flowers and feathers were the favorite offering of the Plumed Serpent. Moreover, flowers and feathers are a metaphor for poetry. Individual words, scattered petals, the down of tropical birds. The temples of blood sacrifice could be transformed into temples of flower and song. A sublimated offering to the Heart of Earth and the Heart of Sky encapsulated in the Classical Nahuatl kenning for poetry: in xōchitl in cuīcatl, meaning, "the flower and the song." The following poem is part of a longer work, and is in a state of flux, so take the waters as they flow:
By Rob Angeli6 days ago in Poets
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