Rose Flint: Firesigns

Rose Flint
Firesigns

Foreword by Edmund Cusick

April 2004. 111 pp. ISBN-13 978-3-901993-16-9; ISBN-10 3-901993-16-9
£10.50 (+ 2.00 p&p), €13.00 (+ 2.50 p&p), US$18.00 (+ 3.00 p&p)

The electricity in Firesigns is more akin to the soft flare of phosporesence than to lightning. Subtly, gently, the reader would be wise to be pre-pared to be changed by this book.

Edmund Cusick, Introduction

[Rose Flint's] writing is most accomplished, elegant and fluent, working unfussily, delighting in language, full of a sense of wonder.

Ian Hughes, Poetry Wales

Excerpts from Firesigns

Water over Dust

Last night you told me
how sacred burial places of the Cherokee
were drowned for reservoirs.

Better perhaps, I said (imagining
clear lakes where only cat's paw breezes
ruffled at the new surface), better
to allow reed-roots and cresses
to wash into your heart's sprung cave,
than endure the constant plundering
of turquoise and silver bracelets
from your sleeping bones.

There was a vision, you said, of a marina
transforming this useless scrubland:
office-towers, promenades, crowds
and pleasures rising
with the glittering, promising water-level;
industry easily leaching its secret waste
beneath the skims of speedboats.

All nations have their prophecies.
Now the Cherokee lie dreaming
ghost whispers under quiet waves
as failed foundations snarl helpless
iron teeth towards the sky and aborted roads
blister into useless dust.
Something of earth has died here, many times,
but new life homes in out of the burning sun
and the drum of the heron's wing
only ceases as he folds himself to wait.

Black North Horse

Horse stamps darkness against white light,
is edged with vibrancy of air.
His breath entering coldness
makes a smoking power; he is charged
and trembling.

I am drawn into the line
of his huge eyes. Nearer,
and I could run my finger across
the satins of his lips, across
the prickly uneasiness of his hide.
I could grasp the coarse wire of his mane
- black crest of strength - and rise
to ride him. Horse of light,
shadow in him, as if he is space cut out
against the white severity of morning.

His lengthening strides would fly me
from this high hill to mountains where frost
sharps boulders into blades of ice
and sky's hand pressing down
on winter's edges, crackles with sparks
and spirits. Riding this horse
I could race thunder, chase lightning,
discover the land beyond
this numbing, northern wind.