Names of Fire, By Radiance Angelina Petro

Names of Fire

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

 

 

Autumn opens her notebooks,

sending words sailing into the streets

never once looking back.

She lends them to the wind

where they are bolstered by many

changes of direction.

 

She knows who we are.

She accepts us as we are—cornstalk fiddles

trying to tune our lives into song.

 

She knows we are apprentices

of the sun, and that few have ever seen

pineapple groves or wandered further

into the mountains.

 

Autumn knows our spirits are tightly

wound spools in need of loosening, so

she coaxes us into wide spaces,

into scouring rains and gloom,

through the smoke of burning leaves,

into the growing, early darkness,

where we hastily scrawl her messages

into linsey-woolsey phrases

with hopes we’ll turn, transformed,

and strong, and change our names into fire

against winter’s coming cold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 


It Still Amazes, by Radiance Angelina Petro

 

 

It Still Amazes

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

 

 

This rhythmic exchange

of sky and lungs.  We hold sky inside us,

swirl it around so it touches

everything; and the sky, in turn,

holds us, touches everything—such delicate

intimacy, such cosmic play.

 

And even when our body has breathed its last, still

we merge and we weave and we dive

and we swim, we turn and we go

where ever we go, lifted in the song

of it all.

 

 

 

 


 

 


We All Know It’s Going to Happen, By Radiance Angelina Petro

We All Know It’s Going to Happen

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

 

 

Fields of corn, after whispering

all summer, have fallen silent,

the earth begins its long, slow inhale,

the last cricket suddenly stops singing,

the grey heron flies, pushing the past

dreamy months behind with sad, tired wings,

branches and roots withdrawal green

back down into the ensouled earth.

 

We all know it’s going to happen,

we all know the cold is coming.

And what does heaven say to us,

as it blankets the ground with gold?

 

It says:

 

begin building your fires, keep each other warm,

and all through the harsh and difficult winter,

remember: seeds are dreaming of light.

 

 

 

 


 


While You Are Not Obligated, By Radiance Angelina Petro

While You Are Not Obligated

By

Radiance Angelina Petro

(Using my own words as well as words

found in The Dictionary of Shipping Terms and Phrases,

by Edward F. Stevens, pub. 1947)

 

 

You are sufficient, seaworthy,

you have tendered time

its disbursements of grief,

your tears have perfected your sight

enough, you have recouped

the solvency of the spirit,

your manifest includes hope’s readiness.

 

Now, against all risk, enter outward,

for there is yet the safety of adventure,

and you now sail unenclosed waters.

 

Mooring ropes, as you know,

wear thin, and there are ships

drifting at sea, others are icebound,

nearly inaccessible, waiting

for the frost-feathered gull

to drop the notice of abandonment.

 

There are plenty of lighthouses along the shore.

What is needed are lightships willing

to take the lost alongside, to pass provisions,

to touch and stay, and lead them

to believe out of the starless night,

and into the harbor of taverns and song,

where they can, unladdened and free

of encumbrances, reinterpret themselves

back into the land of the living.