Dragon Flame

Posted on August 16, 2018August 16, 2018 by Marian Buchanan

The Princess and The Dragon, illustration by Elenore Abbott

Deep in the cave of his Shadows
and hidden treasure,
boundaries of cold
hard
rock
keep

The Western Dragon
from the skies he could be flying.

(My wings are diaphanous.
He doesn’t recognize.)

Stretching out my hands to him,
I enter
his space
though dark and hard to see.

—Jarring
— thunderous roar —
he rages
against
my presented hands,
defends the gold
and gems
he cannot spend.

Spitting flames, he
scorches
my hands,
blisters
my heart.

My wings are singed.
I leave with
a vision:

Beyond this cave,
in the vast
blue
emptiness,
blazes The Great Eastern Sun.

The Great Eastern Dragon,
in his wisdom
and
radiance,
sends forth a flame
— precise and alchemical —

I
rise
like a
Phoenix.

Shadow – a poem

Posted on June 12, 2017October 24, 2024 by Marian Buchanan

I realize this poem may feel a little dark and despairing. I’m hoping the paradoxical sense of transcendence will come across as well.

Shadow

A blank philosophy
filling the wounded spots
shields her invisible threads
with so many mysterious whispers.

From the unseen to the known,
a path is carved
in pure uncertainties.
Hunger
echoes the hollow.

The bottomless pit,
appendage of my father,
rolls out a black carpet
of useless, toiling ways.

If I told you how the wind,
in deep, encrusted caves,
moves in reeking stutters,
obliterates the culmination of
years of brave defiance,
would you see
with eyes of sorrow,
or hear
a voice of shame?

The shadow creeps relentlessly
and I,
in tangled weathers,
engulf the dark that snares me.

Voice of Andrea

Posted on June 8, 2012October 24, 2024 by Marian Buchanan

Background notes on this poem:

I knew Andrea Currie through yoga, when I lived in Halifax in the early-mid-1980’s. She joined the a capella group Four The Moment while I was still there, and I loved her singing voice as much as her soft speaking voice and gentle manner.
She once made and gave me a string of origami paper cranes, which, as I understand it, have been a Japanese symbol of longevity and became a symbol of peace after a little girl, victim of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing, took on the project of making as many paper cranes as she could before she died of cancer.
Voice of Women is a non-partisan Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) advocating for a world without war. They used to sell the poster I describe in the poem, and I hung my copy of it in the hallway where it could remind me every day to be hopeful that each and every little voice does make a difference.

Voice of Andrea

Through dusty glass pane
the branches outside my window
seem to bathe in smokey blue-grey.
They nod
in rhythm
to the heartbeat
of the wind,
sweep the illusory thickness
like fingers trailing thoughtlessly through water.

A leaf becomes deliberate in its wobble,
strokes,
with licking motion,
the reflection
of my gently-spinning paper cranes.
Double panes against the cold
have multiplied the mobile into many ghosts,
potentialities in smokey limbo.
For every voice that speaks aloud
there are ten more whispers dawning.

On the wall in the hallway
a Voice-of-Women poster
tells the story
of the coalmouse asking
what is the weight of a snowflake.
“Nothing more than nothing”
says the dove in reply.
How then does a branch
break
under the fall
of one last crystal?
Only one more voice is needed
to bring peace into the world.

Outside my window
the branches nod.
I think of Andrea
folding pink paper into
origami messages of peace,
giving me this gift.

Andrea’s voice
is sweet and true when she sings.
Andrea’s voice
is gentle when she talks.
Soft like a whisper,
like a delicate miracle of water taking shape,
using harsh conditions of cold
to make
patterns of intricate beauty.