Sea, Fire & Ice Initiation Poems

c.1998 by Maureen B. Roberts

CELTIC INITIATION

That thin sliver of destiny
like a shard of ice was meant to wound
and stake its claim in heart-rending instruction
axis-driven through your Centre
bridging sky and soil
But now its thawing irrigates a sunrise
where blossomings spin outward
in wild radiations of life renewed
That hope destroyed was meant to wind a sickness
like a shroud about your dreams
A tomb yet a cocoon seen from the other side of sorrow
The waiting comes full circle
as a silver ring is forged
and drying wings uncrumple
to begin a flight that reaches distant
backward and abysmal deep
just as much as to the clouds
to pluck the poison berry
of a passion just begun
as shallow seas of pallid moons
are focused into Fire

SHARED SEA-JOURNEY

Apricot, ancient and gold
the Sun's arch winds its way to winsome lands
Riding waves of subversion
our gaze is sub-marine
Upward we cleave through tranquil beams
tracing out the sea-swirl
into a flow of cool uncertain words
We blend and ache for the cavern's cold oblivion
and the silver surface river
of the long-forgotten Moon
Fast it fades, fast it fades
as blood is stained with violet
and salt corroding tear
we subside into translucency
and ocean-wide will never more return

SEA FIRE

As seabirds trail in knotted ribbons sunward
pebbles, jumbled by fierce, aqueous persistence
jostle one another like random points of meaning
while the sea throws careless flames of spray.
They say the sea is a cold, cold dream
far removed from the hot breath of fire.
I say that on a dark world far from here
fountains of burning ice cleave a star-infested sky.
Watching the sea now, scintillant as elusive beings,
closer than a memory of beginnings,
I live and relive a heat-infected burning
in volcanic flame that craves the cool embrace of water.
Both watch blank aeons of peripheral events run by
as across the dark coals of the sea
the Sun rising slants down swords of light
like a great melon tossed to the sky.

DESERT JOURNEYING

Facing the same way, the yearning grows,
two figures on the lonely desert sands,
transient, though making no demands,
they turn around like mirrors shimmering.
The memory spins, cutting like shattered glass.
I saw with you to a distant vortex of beginning
as sands of time ran erosion through the heart.
Black wings passed in silence
above us bound in blue,
reflections echoed back from coal-lit lands,
reflecting those so unimportant plans
to start and end the last scene right here.
For shall we not keep waking, breaking the barriers,
shattering the ice of mere distance
till the spring of rebirth thaws the shadows
of our yet unborn horizons?

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