Home

Ravilious

Home

Night lifts the roofs

from houses, reaches in,

pushes chairs further

into corners, studies people

who do not move

from room to room.

Dreams return, spiders

back to thread the same webs

of sleep. The moist dust

of the carpenter's dream

clings to his shoes and skin.

The Tailor's dream

turns itself inside out

again and again.

The body shifts

in bed. The dream

dances in darkness.

The tongue slides in

the closed mouth

and no one is far from home.

Gregoire Turgeon

A strange poem, yet somehow familiar. It puzzles me. It feels like I've been here, as if I know this poem from the inside but the memory is just beyond reach.

Does night move us around like dolls in a dollhouse? Does it observe our behaviour and wonder why we act the way we do? 

And the dreams! Is night also recording those? Does night lift the roofs of our heads to see the dramas playing out inside?

"And no one is far from home." Hmmm. Are we at home in our houses, in our heads, in our dreams? Are we nested within these protective layers? Who or what is working upon us, and for what purpose?

Fire Wood

The Firewood Poem

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut's only good they say,
If for logs 'tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold

Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last,
it is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E'en the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke,

Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter's cold
But ash wet or ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.

Lady Celia Congreve

Snow again! Even at the end of February! We thought it was spring - the little green shoots in the flowerbed made us hopeful. But now the woodpile is needed, and given the choices listed here, I'd go for pear wood. A fire that smells like flowers? Heck yeah.