Poet's Fire

On walls of cave in life gone by, stick dipped in last meals blood, I daubed the walls with drawings of the things I understood. A running dear, a hand held spear, me hiding by a tree, then carrying aloft the kill we’d eaten for our tea! A chisel and a hammer clashed as I chipped out my name above the door where I now worked, a sculpture of some fame. Gravestones in rhyme, I’d served my time apprenticed to my trade, statues and busts now served my lust as they were better paid. On parchment scroll, I played my role with feather for a quill my words recalled the deeds of all, and even their last will. But parchment brushed in coloured dyes I found much to my gain as portraits falling from my brush assured the buyer’s fame. But lifetimes pass and all evolve and now with ink and pen once again I write down thoughts, the cycle starts again. As rhyme unfolds from depths untold, once more I find my hand must serve the purpose born in me that centuries have planned. I blame the blood of hunters kill, the stone the chisel shaped the records on the parchment scroll that quill and ink had scraped, I blame the memories of old that kindle my desire igniting passions buried deep to spew forth poet’s fire. Ivor G Davies