Heart's Places

(For Red Warren)


I.

The man said it all well. As young sunlight and old granite, he was there,
Telling stories of the world. You could feel

The worlds unfolding, taste the weather and strain, the laughing, the passions, see the long hard marches in his words.

He would lean to the children's call, and answer their wishes with worlds in the giving.
As the early sun and the ripe granite do, he gave and gave.

Tell me.


II.                           


Great spirits make great faces, colored and living.

They are the far reachers. They make world spaces,

Founded in fires and in clay, sung in high tempests

Where the hot light flashes, iced where the need for ice is,

So great spirits form the world. More than the season's passing

Marks their time. Imagine...



III.


Red drums over long rivers, black drumming cities

White singing praises, red blood on old sabers

Deep hearts full, iced lakes and hot harvesting

The long highways and the gentle furrows made.


Here is the red man's answer, there are hawks calling.

Here is the black man's sigh, there the hard cut of steel.

Here is hot horse muscle and hoofs on the dirt hills,

There the town of the dull, the wicked, the cross
tongued.

The tire's scream, and the deep cave's silent wait, all in one land.



IV.

Dry pages, running tears and deep frozen glens -- these things
Are one in the heart.

Sad dogs and laughing glory, wines and the open seas, one. Worlds in the giving,

Children can hear him answering: wishes answered with color, living men, strong faces, bright laughing reason.

A far reaching hand shows them: the heart is more than its seasons.

Here is a great spirit making great spaces, and there he is still,

Only ask again, and he will start.