Padraig's Fire
Padraig's Fire
Hurry!
Hurry through the night
With windstorms
Breathing at your back
Before the shadows know
You pass their doors -
Their darkened, dusty, empty hearths -
Before the dawn ascends -
Before the pipes awaken;
Carry close
Precious flint and tinder
Next to the wildly beating
Warmth -
Beneath your flowing cape.
Hurry!
Hurry down the rolling path,
Rising up to meet your feet,
Sweetly caressing your rushing steps,
Passing sentinels
Of ancient oaks,
Graveyards
Where primeval elms once stood,
That guard a narrow door
Of the river Boyne
Watching over Tara's keep
In a valley of wild rushing eddies
Shedding superstitions
Restraining deep planted longings.
Hurry!
No faire voices invitation;
Only life, held out in promises,
Beckons pilgrims here -
Pass through the numbing chill
Going down to rise up
Past myths
Into inviting aires and covenants;
Pass through the chill of seperation;
Pass through the swirling current
Gripping to release sandaled feet;
Hold high the flint and tinder
Then rest within the hollows of a hand
In quiet glens of grace.
Listen!
Listen for the kerry drums
Pounding welcome in swirling reels -
Ancient dances -
Reawakened from Adam's time
Released from sleep to circle round and round
While sparks from glowing tinder,
Brought to life from sharpened flint,
Battle winds of haunted years
That lived in isolation
Pulling up from fiery spindles flaming whorls -
New and paschal fire returning;
Circles meeting circles thunder
In death's shattering death.
Listen!
Listen as the moan of banshees
Banishes forever winter's touch
To see the sleeping hills
Shake off an exiled life
And hear the harps - uilleann pipes,
Newborn visions
Watch the wind dance of the kells begin
With towering fireworks
Shooting up from the valley floor
In rhythm to the bohdran and the tiompan
To seek completeness
In the hotly glow of dawning -
Vernal offerings in emerald fire.
Arise!
Arise to cradle emerald fire
Dreaming ever softly
In fields of clover
And timeworn stones,
Witnesses
To the arrival of winnowing flames
When centuries embraced
Again
Until the days remembering
Final meals and crosses - a waiting tomb -
Blesses once again
The quest of hard flint and soft tender
Before a cross - life within a circle.
Copyright © Sam Kauffman | Year Posted 2020
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