The Poetry of Author David Sparenberg
WORD
Before the written word, there was the spoken word.
Before the chronicles of history, there were stories.
Before tabloids and the messy spawn of scandalous gossip, ballads and epic poems sounded in mouths of bards and minnesingers.
Against the blind furies of forgetfulness, arose high cultures of memory.
Long before civilized humanity slumped into pulp fiction and sado-masochistic fantasies, myths were weaving threads of truth into archetypes, extending the dimensions of reality.
Guiding words of fire’s intensity and eloquence resonate joyously through the alchemic laboratories of time!
You who have befriended Tolkien and the Shire, Arthur, Merlin, and voyagers to the Isle of Women, far, far off in the mist of sea and time, far beyond the fated Island of Apples – remember the beauty, questing, and the dreaming of words.
ORPHIC VOICE
Somebody sang a song. Song
moved on air
across land, across water.
It was heard far away.
The song sounded
in ears of another.
It brought a voice, sweet
as amber honey
and saying something.
That song
made a stranger’s eyes widen.
That song
entered the heart of a lover.
A
scribe
in the House of Memory
dipping one finger
into a rainbow
into a puddle of gold
remembered the song.
This is how I began
at dawn of day
at the origin of time.
An unknown singer
an Orphic voice
singing to life spontaneously.
Song on the wind!
That is how I will end:
a well in a circle
reflecting a rainbow.
a chant poem for 3 or 4 voices
the whistle the whistle the fiddle the drum
the whistle the whistle the fiddle the drum
the pipe the pipe the fiddle the drum
the pipe the pipe the fiddle the drum
the roads the stones the Emerald the sea
the roads the stones the Emerald the sea
that man standing out
with the sheep on the road
has time on his face
and stout of the land
in his body and soul
the fiddle the whistle the pipe the drum
that girl over there
with the flame of her hair
has the storm of wild sea
in her body and soul
the pipe the pipe the fiddle the drum
the pipe the pipe the fiddle the drum
the whistle the whistle the fiddle the drum
from Galway to Dingle the Emerald o’ sea
from Cork to the Arans- Emerald o’ sea
Sligo to Dublin Emerald o’ sea
the Skelligs to Tara the Emerald o’ sea
the stones the stones the Emerald o’ sea
roads the roads the Emerald o’ sea.
the pipes the fiddle the whistle the drum!
SHAMAN’S TAG
Once I was a rock:
long time I was a rock
living in the way of rock
hard and slow.
Then I became the shadow of a rock.
I shifted many shapes and seasons.
One morning, in conjunction
of a sun and moon, I awoke
to find that I had taken on
the nature of a tree.
My life then was of roots and branches.
I dreamed myself ever closer to the sky.
After I grew intuitive
with the stealth of wolves and
clicking gait of caribou
I became a human body.
Now I cast a human shadow on the ground.
I talk with wind
the vision-memories of my human soul.
I say, “I am a man; I
am a woman.” I ask,
“How long will these bones dance together?”
I remember when I was a rock.
I recall having been a shadow.
I remember when I was a tree.
Someday I will remember
telling others in a circle
of this game shaman’s tag.
I will cherish this feeling….
(Photo:Green Man in the Garden by David Sparenberg)
Davis Sparenberg is the author of CONFRONTING the CRISIS: Essays & Meditations on Eco Spirituality (Moon Books). An international essayist, eco poet and shamanic storyteller, David lives in Seattle, WA in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

