Elemental Stuff

Transience sometimes provides small rewards for humans. When we evaluate what's permanent and meaningful we inevitably revert to the basic elements.

 Air.

Air, home of the spirits,

Breath of God.

Kinetic sculptor of all shape,

Defining master of sea and sod.

Air, benefactor of all bellows,

Human, and made by hand,

Shaping a wraith of cloud,

Polishing a grain of sand.

Air, ferries life to each of us

And randomly takes it away,

She lends form to the dance

Gives voice its say.

Air, great runway of the heavens,

Gives landing to earthly aspirations,

Sounds the death knell of ones

And twos and all passing nations.

Air in singular majesty

Decides what might be,

Syllable, phrase or sentence

Or page of history.

Air of contract and expand,

Accordion never still,

Stroked by invisible fingers

Tuned by ethereal will.

Air, lavish larder of countless scents,

Home of myriad memories and dreams,

Unseen guardian of mists and moisture

Eternal proof of all is not what it seems.

Air, life source of every flame,

Greater than gravity your power,

Ferryman of dark and light

Pendulum of every hour.

Fire.

The Gods, in playful mood

stole a cinder from the sun,

And Prometheus in turn

stole this fire for everyone.

In the name of the Fire

the Sun and the Stars,

This forever flame

borrowed its colour from Mars.

This fire got life from friction

as does every living thing,

from flash, flame and flicker

the cricket learned to sing.

Fire conspires with air

To bring liquid flame alive

And still the mystery remains

Why only the pure survive.

And man believes in control

Of this element, for himself

In forge and kiln and stove

Red matches on the shelf.

Terror, the democracy of fire

Invented by soul savers

Not to live better lives

But be owned by people slavers.

This fire produces light

Frail shadow of the dark,

Impatient fire never still

using every spark

to brighten conversations

at the hearth of every grate,

Shape-changing theatre of tale,

Matter into nothing, nothing matters, too late.

 

          Stone

Land, first born of the first born,

Here before us, here without us, alone.

The ancient eye of landscape watched our coming

patiently, through pebble, boulder and stone.

Land gave us whereness and temporary roots,

Foundation for our frailty and need,

In return we gave her rape, ruin and pillage

to power our engine of greed.

Mother of meteor, father of fossil,

Vulnerable to religion’s daughter,

Silent parchment of all commandments,

Her message is ferried by breeze and water.

Rock and mountain, grain of sand,

Ledge and ravine has soul.

Intruder man knows lesser Gods,

Lesser than her grounded mole.

What is ‘here’ or ‘there’ without the land?

Where is home and away?

Every place is where she leaves us,

Allows us to come or stay.

Birds and beasts her allies,

Seas and mountains her stores,

Trees and rivers her jewels,

Etna and Vesuvius her pores.

Man, an earthen vessel himself,

Self proclaimed Lord of all,

Stone, the ultimate conclusion,

Certainty, the coming of another fall.

Ever changing skin of vegetation and colour

Every heartbeat an ever filling glass,

Earth, mantle of our useless bones,

Secure in the knowledge, ‘these too will pass’.

 

         Water

Water, liquefied air grounded by gravity

Far greater Leveller than even Shirley’s Death,

Dew in the morning, fog in the evening,

Translucent halo of angel’s breath.

Binding member of eternal elements,

Ancient conversations with the stone,

Tears of the earth, border of life and death

Life that can live alone.

At the wedding feast of Cana

the host was mute and hushed,

Then the humble water met the Lords gaze

and the humble water blushed.

Since baptism in Jordan’s river,

Since Ararat of two by two,

There’s no will but the water’s will

The white swell and the blue.

The well connects the darkness and the light,

The seaside ties the water to the land,

The river joins the country and the ocean

And rain provides the life in everyman.

Ice, the surgeon with eternal scalpel

Carved each valley, glacier, river bed,

Elusive mist, cloak of every mountain,

Snow, a scarf for headstones of our dead.

Water, first mirror of the universe,

Never strays outside its own desire,

Tide, slave mistress of the moon,

Diviner of thirst; of flame, a sole defier.

The first swim of this life

in amniotic whirlpool of the womb,

The last swim of this life

in all embracing moisture of the tomb.