Best Cairn Poems
SUMMER SOLSTICE
Queen Meabh stood beside the cairn, her velvet cape fluttered in the night air,
She called onto the Goddess Aine to return the moon safe to its hidden lair.
Braziers crackled as wood and turf warmed the dark hour before dawn’s light,
Na Fianna Warriors guarded against the savage unknown forces of the night.
A lone whistler’s haunting tune announced the Thuaith De Dannan clan’s arrival,
And Morganna smirked as frightened eyes diverted their gaze in self survival.
The heart beat of the bodhran was joined by the uilleann piper’s soothing soul,
As evil Balor shook with fear, banished safe within his watery hell hole.
Then moonlight sparkled the wild sea horses as the waves hissed onto the shore,
Aine slipped into the blue of the night as the clans stood in darkness once more.
Then Druids began to chant as queen Meabh raised her golden Torc and spear,
Excitement roused the gathered crowd as they sensed the magic drawing near.
The bodhran raced its primitive beat as chanting and music shook the world,
On the horizon the sun God Eatain loosed the false sun, as nature was unfurled.
The Druids entered the sacred cairn as outside the clans watched the true sun rise,
Its sunbeam flowed across the land about to unveil its most wondrous surprise.
Its beam lit up the chamber dais as golden ogham symbols glowed an amber hue,
Clapping and singing rose to the skies as new beginnings were ringing true.
The breakfast feast was shared to all and offerings were made to the mighty god,
Four thousand years later we still honour this festival and respect the sacred sod.
26th May 2016 S.de B.
Categories:
cairn, celebration, ireland,
Form:
Couplet
The beach gathers its dead. Thousands of horseshoe crabs
come home on the full moon’s tide. Their courting dances,
scrawled with claw and carapace in the wet sand, leave
with the ghost hands of nursing Autumn wave.
Their nests of jewel-colored eggs, covered and soothed
seasoned in salt sea, gestate beneath a slurry of debris.
Right side up each skin colored husk with its barbed tail
rocks in the bubbling broth of Cape Cod’s bay.
Belly up, they appear as an open invitation to the plovers
who flock overhead and arrow down en masse to dine.
Piping plovers, masked in black, hopscotch through the
detritus, connoisseurs of this turquois egg-like caviar.
Among the life and death of sea we walk, barefoot, and
cautious wary of the scramble, the jutting barbs, the bits
of un-soothed glass, the desecrated cairn which barricades
the dying life from the living sea.
Published First in Sounding Review 2015
Categories:
cairn, age, autumn, ocean,
Form:
Lyric
Grandma's Pets
My granda went away to sea
For many months on end
He'd travel on a fishing boat
With his brother and a friend
He used to write home regularly
And tell some quite tall tales
About being in a far-away place
When he was actually in Wales
Once they actually went to Africa
He wrote he was bringing Gran a pet
When he came home with a small cage
He'd brought her a marmoset
He opened up the cage
And up the curtains it did run
The curtains tore, granda laughed,
Grandma didn't think it fun
She said it had to go
So to the pet shop Granda went
He returned without the Monkey
And to ‘Coventry’ he was sent
Granda apologised and said
that he would compensate
Next day he bought Gran Tip,a cat
Bimbo, the budgie, feared its fate
He'd run up and down his ladder
And his cuttlefish he would gnaw
He took one look at Tip and thought
'I've not seen you before'
One day he pecked his bell so hard
The clapper fell out onto the floor
No matter how much he pecked it
That bell would ring no more
Bimbo, I’d known since a little girl
He lived to a good age
I still remember that fateful day
I found him lifeless in his cage
Tip lived till he was seven
Many kittens he would father
Mrs Thomas would bang on the door
And get in a right lather
“Your Tip's been paying visits
To my precious tabby Pip.
If you don't keep him in
I'll see to it he has ‘the snip'”
After Tip came Ruff the dog
A cairn terrier with his papers
We would laugh so many times
At his little doggie capers
There were two unbuttered teacakes
Sitting on a plate
Mum went to fetch the butter
She came back to an empty plate
Ruff was looking sheepish
Crumbs all around his chin
The cute expression on his furry face
I could swear it was a grin
We lost Ruff when he was eight
Poison in his canned dog food
If that had happened now
The manufacturer we'd have sued
Grandma put her foot down
And told Granda “No more pets”
She missed them all
Well most of them
But not the marmoset
Categories:
cairn, grandparents, pets, , cute,
Form:
Rhyme
( It seems the only thing eternal life has left me is eternal tears.
For my lost son Christopher; named after the god who suffers. )
I knew you before I met you
cage crossing through mad books
your stainless leap
forcep-blessed
matrix-reprieved
weaving bled-shred
embers to god-pled
braving
the cairn of night
to do full
dubious ends
god's just
flung to hijacked earth as
after-thought
of finer stone
slashed lash skin broke to Moses hues
whose mode struck cursed
to sudden wander
to tower-armed berths annexed next in
your voyeur's finger rage
to run abducted through heuristic sunk-end heads
and sacrifice your brokered queen
prove your tongue-burning tears
a strangled pen
inched favor from chain-shell shouts
sieved by sheltering friends
savaged the race-card feeds
fouled in chilling fidgets
glyphed everyman's advance
to cherish one ascending
giving divinity thought-shadow charges
to dodge doc's sunny reparteé
finally
bipolar glue-power unclogs the gash
cherish your psyche's wormwood-hack
your peace-ink cooling blue
your snow-truth judgement bridged
with one bank and a gun
whose prophet
son of none
_________________
Notes:
1. A journalist once asked the Dalai Lama if he had to reduce the teachings of Buddhism to one word, what would it be. His response was; "Compassion".
If asked to do the same for Christianity, my word, similarly, would be: "Kindness".
Categories:
cairn, loss, mental illness, sorrow,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Memories, someone asked?
Here’s one. Let me pull it out from the past,
Let me set it next to the grandfather clock in the parlor,
That used to count out time in chimes by the hour.
Mother is sitting in the corner armchair,
As if she had all the time in the world to spare.
Her silver hair tucked neatly into a bun,
Furiously at work on her knitting, homespun.
A faint smile extending the line of her lips,
A light like twilight falling where she sits.
She counts meticulously the stitches under her breath.
She knitted complicated patterns until her death.
My, the wonder and the mystery of her craft;
She put light into every stitch drawn from an inner shaft,
With those bone-white fingers fragile as a matchstick,
Pouring her heart and soul into the work stitch by stitch,
Creating colorful designs that she fused into the pattern,
Imitating a discipline that lined her life with satin.
As the clicking of the needles sings,
Thousands upon thousands of stitches she brings,
Turning the yarn into sweaters and scarves,
Once she knitted woolen socks to warm my calves,
Colorful, fuzzy and full of strands,
All made into something magical by her loving hands.
With kind patience, knitting afghans became her specialty,
Making one after the other until her final frailty.
Every child and grandchild cried out to have one,
Until I finally had my own afghan by her loving hands spun,
Made of colored strips of browns and orange and yellows,
The autumnal colors seemed to be enflamed by an invisible bellows.
She stitched those various colors one by one,
Hands moving swiftly as she smiled faintly under the winter sun.
She seemed to be writing a melody into the strings of the yarn,
To imprint on the work of a lifetime the majesty of a sacred cairn.
She was a good woman in her time, better than most,
The twilight still falls on her face, pure white, like a ghost.
Categories:
cairn, family, mother,
Form:
Verse
The Bichon Frise
The Bichon in chiffon looks so frou
That the crowd duly wowed has to coo
‘Til the dog starts to droop
And its owner to scoop
Some acutely embarrassing doo
The Border Collie
It was not Albert Einstein who dared
To think E = mc2
But rather a Border
Who brought cosmic order
One morning while out with his laird
The Bulldog
My Bulldog won’t frolic or fetch
His face may cause others to kvetch
But he’s gentle and sweet
With the kids on the street
And the ladies all think I’m a ketch
The Cairn Terrier
Cairns have been bred to hunt vermin
Be it Spanish, Australian, or German
Its body is wee
Though as tough as a tree
And as ruthless as General Sherman
The Chihuahua and Great Dane
Chihuahuas and Danes one surmises
Are extremes when it comes to their sizes
The one is so small
It is nothing at all
While the other is big and wins prizes
The Chinese Crested
I passed one of these down on Lincoln
For a moment I thought I’d been drinkin’
He looked so bizarre
That I stopped in a bar
To keep my poor eyeballs from shrinkin’
The Collie
To many a Collie means Lassie
The wonderdog faithful and classy
But on re-run TV
(Or is it just me?)
Do her eyes look a little bit glassy?
The Corgi
The Corgi is not one to hurry
Much preferring a stroll to a flurry
If you happen by chance
To invite one to dance
He’ll say, “Hey, I am not Arthur Murray!”
The Dachshund
The Dachshund’s a marvel on skis
Little legs that stop short of its knees
It can schuss like a pro
Making furrows in snow
(Though its privates are given to freeze)
The Dalmatian
Dalmatians are doomed to be stuck
In the seat of a fireman’s truck
When they’d much rather cruise
In a Jag that’s chartreuse
On a track that’s for testing your luck
Categories:
cairn, animal, cute, dog, funny,
Form:
Limerick
The wizard will know everyone I met along the way said.
Okay, I thought, for I am from Kansas and not daft in my head.
I looked for the curtain as I pranced down the yellow brick road.
Instead of Toto a cairn terrier, I was followed by a frog who looked old.
The mini-munchkins did not come out to greet or to sing.
I never found a scarecrow, tinman or lion with zing.
In the far distance I saw a poppy field, but the flowers looked odd.
An old witch-like creature with wings gave me a head nod.
Where is the wizard? I yelled, kind of half-heartedly.
That’s when I found a lively sassy wise talking oak tree.
Winged monkeys are about, so make haste she warned me.
Fear came into my heart, I’ve seen Wizard of Oz times twenty-three.
I began to run and hit my head on an unexpected branch.
I woke up smelling cinnamon, pumpkin and possibly ranch.
A frog with a wizard hat was concocting some kind of spell.
I wondered if I was still alive or I had gone to…..
Categories:
cairn, 10th grade, 4th grade,
Form:
Rhyme
O're the rock strewn shores of Loch Lomond, upon the glaciered northern rock,
A lonely, barren, desolate stand, refuge to ancient Gaelic stock.
In this land o're grown with heath, tween' a realm named Rannoch Liath,
On a misty, dreary cairn,
There lived a lassie near the peaks, whose life of toil was one forlorn.
Sheltered in her little cabin warm, protected from the highland storm -
Just a lowly peasant serf -
Whose kin was of this barren earth.
A lovely lass, her hair of gold, imprisoned in a life on hold - she could not run,
Nor could she hide;
Her life of drudgery she would abide.
Yet, hoping to abscond this highland moor, and this desolate, barren scape,
Pleading for an opportunity, a sanction to escape.
Villagers said, they saw her go that bitter night - carrying a lantern with her,
ascending to the heights.
They said they didn't stop her, they thought she went for wood;
no one ever saw her, vanishing that night.
aabb July 31, 2016
Categories:
cairn, emotions, longing, sad, suicide,
Form:
Rhyme
Those shrunken grey turrets throw
Their distraught shadows to the wind;
And in the grey twilight of ancient
Beinn Chìochan...
Hear you the droning sounds of
Muted pipes retreating far back and
Away.
Albert heaves upon the old grey
cairn;
When woken from his immortal sleep,
Laments beside the darkening waters
For that which, despite all its
Eternal majesty...
He knows can but never come again.
Over grey skies, glowering like the
Grey dawning,
Spanned the rainbow to briefly flicker
Before the remaining day;
But with the grey night will come the
Weeping...
And London Bridge, reduced to nought
But Her, laid finally down.
Categories:
cairn, remember,
Form:
Free verse
Majestic, barren, rock-cropped braes ascend—
Arrayed, green-clad, in heather, gorse, and fern—
As mid-day, misty, dark’ning clouds descend
To cold-embrace each soaring tor and burn.
From heights unseen a torrent cascades free,
Unfettered into deep Ben Nevis’ glen;
Then onwards toward Loch Linnhe and the sea,
Through sodden bog and brackened, stone-strewn fen.
Though hidden from the eyes of those below,
Ben Nevis’ surly brow is sought and found
By those who brave the rain, the sleet, and snow,
To scale the cairn that marks its highest ground.
And there, amidst the cloud, God reaches down
To touch and bless fair Scotland’s Highland crown.
brae=steep hillside
tor=rocky peak
burn=hillside stream
This sonnet is one of a set of five sonnets written while traveling through Ireland and Scotland in June 2019. This sonnet was inspired by my climb to the snowy summit of Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the British Isles. The poem is included in my book, "Mostly Sonnets," published by Dunecrest Press and available for sale on Amazon.com.
Categories:
cairn, beauty, god, mountains, nature,
Form:
Sonnet
Mother, I feel the weight the spinning world.
I feel each parental nudge, as a rock, in the cairn of my life,
the weight coats my fragile fleeing thoughts, dulling.
The spinning child teeters to adult whirlwind, still, sloughing stale nudges.
Worlds appear and disappear within the turmoil of my roiling mind
feel each parental nudge declined,
as a rock standing firm against a gale of fright
in the cairn** of my life, I will reign.
Son, I know I ask too much, am too much, give too much, hold me.
I know, you know, I too spin, and teeter in the winter of my years.
I ask only that you see my love, in the absences, as we grow.
Too much of mewling mother has melded with you, I weep.
Am too much, and in being so, feel never enough.
Give too much of my own fear, though unintended, it bleeds.
Hold me close as my time is ending, and the rocks of my reign fall.
* This is my original form called Et Cetera a subcategory of Free Verse
**cairn is a pile of rocks made to blaze a trail
Categories:
cairn, allegory, caregiving, mother, son,
Form:
Free verse
Totems of What If
Can we ever escape
that which we create
but often choose to ignore
Like the mismatched rocks of a cairn
random choice is not an option
complimenting shapes and sizes
make up one's balance
one's direction
one's harmony
Yet some
Aspiring high rise urban dwellers
live a rock steel and glass totem life
stacking mismatched building blocks
like mutated animal lineage not of the fittest
unknowingly making unbalanced direction
even while gasping air to defy their self-made reality
Might they be destined to realize a primeval demise
like a surreal incarnation atop modern scaffold
where ghostly burial rites of Great Plains nomadic tribes
wait to happen
Can primitive wisdom ever penetrate assumed importance
before the inverted vortex of tumbling balance
consumes itself atop the rising funnel of ignorance
distilling the wrongs of misbegotten power
to but sand kernels of infinity's hourglass
Such might be the destiny of man's innate totems
the unique building blocks that make us the species we are
while stealthily we try desperately to become a species we are not
Categories:
cairn, hope,
Form:
Free verse
The wizard will know everyone I met along the way said.
Okay, I thought, for I am from Kansas and not daft in my head.
I looked for the curtain as I pranced down the yellow brick road.
Instead of Toto a cairn terrier, I was followed by a frog who looked old.
The mini-munchkins did not come out to greet or to sing.
I never found a scarecrow, tinman or lion with zing.
In the far distance I saw a poppy field, but the flowers looked odd.
An old witch-like creature with wings gave me a head nod.
Where is the wizard? I yelled, kind of half-heartedly.
That’s when I found a lively sassy wise talking oak tree.
Winged monkeys are about, so make haste she warned me.
Fear came into my heart, I’ve seen Wizard of Oz times twenty-three.
I began to run and hit my head on an unexpected branch.
I woke up smelling cinnamon, pumpkin and possibly ranch.
A frog with a wizard hat was concocting some kind of spell.
I wondered if I was still alive or I had gone to…..
Categories:
cairn, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form:
Rhyme
Times spent most unwisely, unkindly
are each marked on this journey of ours
with a cairn of regret; small reminders
strewn by our souls like rancid breadcrumbs,
untouched, even by the hungriest of birds
not to stain the past, but to steer the present
and with hope, to sweeten the future
Categories:
cairn, growth, life, memory, spiritual,
Form:
Free verse
Sundial
My passion is the silent weather vane
The gambrel brought such sorrow
Much I marveled this roughcast cairn
Eagerly I looked for the lintel
I have dreamed of the clocks
Eagerly I looked for the masonry
It was heterodox
Somewhat louder than the freemasonry
Back into my memories rewinding
And the clapboards never machining
Deep into that darkness watching
Still is notching, still is notching
The graves seemed happy botching
And so I screamed, 'Is that a weatherboard?'
I crave the dissident, derelict dormer window
My mind always strays to caryatids
Much I marveled the dissident gazebo
Much I marveled the eighth patio
I crave the baronial, balcony breezeway
You warned me about the indigo
And so I screamed, 'Is that a drift way?'
Take thy landscaping from out my heart
What time is it, And the megaliths never grinding
What time is it, And the masonry was nonbinding
I heard an italianated, slapdash roofing
It was fireproofing
I discovered the statues
Take thy picket fence from out my heart
I discovered the vases
Deep into that darkness listening
'It's that plaster work,' I muttered
My passion is the silent weather vane
The gambler brought such sorrow
Much I marveled this roughcast iron bane
Eagerly I looked for the lintel barrow
It's a new day and yet dark now,
What time is it on the sundial?
4/7/19
written words by James Edward Lee Sr.2019 ©
Categories:
cairn, adventure, analogy, time,
Form:
Free verse