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Sits With Sharpened Bone Come acknowledge what is apparent to those of us whose echoes hardly whisper anymore of our souls who are now, at last, resigned to feign we might have actually lived a life, or stolen snatches of thoughts from those who went before. This is poetry -- is it not? -- an odd alliance of souls, some here, some there, but all engaged in this sacred art, this pounding out of fleshy words that must be scratched with bone, dipped in the blood of souls long gone, but who still manage to echo backwards into the land where some poet sits ready with the sharpened bone to prick the flesh of page, one who knows blank mind and blank page are the proper receptors of such notions that come flouncing back to try, to try, to describe the mechanics of cold souls and electric thoughts, some who conspire. © Ward Kelley |
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Artist's note: Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was one of the greatest authors of fiction the world has produced. Best known for "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," he enjoyed a long literary career spanning the youthful extolment of Cossack life to a later quest for moral and social certitudes. He became a conscience to the world, and developed a credo of five commandments: do not become angry; do not lust; do not bind yourself by oaths; do not resist him that is evil; be good to the just and unjust. His avocation of a life of poverty increasingly brought him into conflict with his wife, and his final years were marked by incessant bickering with her. In the end, the quarrels drove him from home one night, and he died three days later at a remote railroad station. He once wrote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Ward Kelley Bonfire contributor |