Speaking Past The Fire Poem by Jared Carter

to the memory of Max Ellison, at the 45th parallel

1

The first evening I went out there, on the solstice,
past the frame house at the top of the hill, down
through the clumps of dune grass, toward the circle
of dark boulders, with fire gleaming at the center -
the first time I entered the ring, seeing how many
had gathered, with children in their laps, waiting,
watching the sparks fly - you asked me to begin
by reciting 'Sign-Painter's, ' and I got to my feet,
not knowing the lines, unable to hear my own voice
under that broad sky - with a quarter moon rising
and a breeze coming off the lake - and said a poem
no one could hear above the crackling of the fire.

2

How many times I went back, over the next few years,
trying to find out how they sounded, those people
who lived along that shore, and in those forests,
when they made fires, and sat around them, speaking
to remember. And from you, Max, and the others,
learned ways to talk unaided in the open air. 'The pines, '
one explained, 'below the circle, form a curtain. Face
downhill, look up as you speak: words bounce back
from the trees, spread out. People hear what comes
from the world they live in, not some empty place.
Speak toward what you cannot imagine could reply.
If words come back at all, they come back changed.'

3

Another said: 'Those who find their way to this farm
hear something they knew once, and hope to remember.
That is why they come, why they bring their children
and set up tents in the meadow, why they wait here
for the fire to be lighted, for the old man to enter,
leaning on his staff - to explain to them that now
we will hear stories, and say poems, and make music
for our heart's ease. When they look into the fire,
they lose themselves. Do not speak across it, already
they hear nothing, drawn by that spell. Be instead
the voice of their dreaming. Aim your words to one side
of the flames. It is not yourself you are offering.'

4

Later, when I stood to recite, it seemed the letters,
books and pages, all the learning I had tried to cram
into my brain since childhood, had fled - had turned
to ash and scattered in the twilight. Telling alone
was all that mattered - watching those faces, sharing
in their wonder, their laughter, even their sorrow.
Whether the next speaker was young or old, man or woman,
whether the one beginning knew the lines imperfectly
and turned for help, until a new voice took the thread,
journeying on, to the farthest reaches of the tale -
that making was what held me, brought me back each year,
on the longest day, to the stone circle at the lake's edge.

5

Time itself was transfixed by those evenings - out far,
beyond Mission Point, in open water, the orange disk
of the sun smoldered on the lake. Within the circle,
slowed by the telling, by the flow of words, we watched
the sky open to the stars, to the incommensurable sweep
of the galaxy. I remember your voice, when the logs
had shifted to coals, and only three or four of us
remained - your voice, speaking past the fire,
making a music out of your own life, your wanderings,
the spiels of side-show barkers, preachers, con-men,
politicians - your voice, weaving it all together,
the self no longer mattering in that shadowy world.

6

Those moments are gone now - not lost, but set free,
able to reverberate, to come back changed. I can feel
their presence, their incalculable rhythms, on nights
when the wind skirls the leaves outside my window,
and I know the waves - gleaming with imperfect light,
impossibly beckoning - have found me. I lift the latch
and step through the cabin door, brushing aspen leaf
and red cedar. I follow the path to the water's edge,
to ribbons of wrack and gull feather scattered across
the sand. I gather driftwood for a fire on the beach,
and stay, long into the night - gazing at the embers,
listening to the crackling, watching the sparks rise.

Coda

Then, after many years of wandering, matching
the time Odysseus was estranged from Ithaca, I returned -
again on an endless summer night, with all the stars
in their old places, the Milky Way never more clear,
more immanent - and they were all still there, singers
and sayers, with the fire burning, and the dark woods
surrounding. 'Will you say a poem for us tonight? '
Terry asked, and at first I was afraid of the shadows
still lingering, and the hopes we once had. Finally I said,
'Yes. Let me recite for you one last time, allow me
to speak the lines of Landor, that truculent man, about
the fire of life: ‘It sinks, and I am ready to depart.''


First published in The Raintown Review.