The Poetry of Harry
            Furness

            


            
Ancestor Dance

            
I saw my ancestors last night

            They were standing around outside the wall of a castle

            Waiting

            (This surprised me, because for the longest time

            I was sure that I was, in a previous life, in Hannibal's army

            Following the elephants over the Alps

            Helping to fertilize the countryside)

            I was pretty sure that they weren't waiting for me

            But I was looking down on them

            Not because of any social status I had acquired

            But, from the wall above them

            I seemed to have been tethered to the outer

            Walls - Like a poor man's Prometheus

            I started worrying about my liver

            Below me were all manner of men and women

            These were people responsible for the genetic materials

            That made me

            Whatever uniqueness I was, was from the combinations of those

            Before the stone wall

            As I watched them drift off into the mists

            (It must have been English heaths, why not-It was my dream and
            it beat the 

            Shitty Alps)

            I felt as though my tethers were snapping one at a time as they
            left, looking 

            Back over their shoulders as they walked away

            Rather than a fear of falling

            I knew that once they were gone

            Or forgotten

            I would drift off

            Not tied to earth or the past or 

            Connected to the future

            Set adrift in the air like the ether 

            Unattached 

            Sharing both ultimate freedom 

            And eternal entrapment

            
 

            
What

            
I feel the gentle evening breeze kissing
            my cheek

            As I sit with my thoughts of -

            I hear the night song of birds nesting, resting

            The kiss of the summer's breath on my late autumns' brow

            I am running out of months while the year is but half its time

            I already feel the winter's cold

            Even though the June bugs take to flight each night

            Wait a minute this isn't going well at all, try again,

            I see children running and playing with abandon

            My brothers and I are loose in this, my summer's day

            Running in and out of the shade, our bare feet slap against the
            grass

            I run as the sun touches us through the dappled sun/shade of
            the trees

            And the grass waves leaf up/leaf down as we run past

            The sun lightens our hair as it darkens our skin

            I hear my brothers' laughter and join in as we giggle about -

            This is much better and old Walt would be pleased, just put in
            a phase about

            becoming what you see and it would be better,

            I enjoy the summer's late sunset beyond the trees

            The sky's colours of red and orange encourage me

            I revel in life and delight in each day

            Thank you

            
 

            
Stories

            
There was an old man in Kamchatka telling
            a child

            A story of how elders decided laws

            He breathed air in and spoke out the tale

            In Italy, an old woman is telling a friend in the market 

            How she determines if the fruit is ripe

            She breathed air in and spoke out the advice

            In Zaire, a small child tells how to trap ants

            By moating the anthill

            He breathed air in and spoke out the trick

            Two office workers exchange pleasantries in an office cubicle

            The talk going up into the heating ducts

            Joined with other voices and other stories and tales

            Breathing in parts of tales told by others

            All of these stories unleashed into the air

            All of these human voices trading in human information

            The exhale and stories and tales and sounds

            Join in the movement of the earth

            One exhaled tale, inhaled by another and commingled

            And becoming part of the next exhaled tale

            Each sound joining the others before them and 

            Roaring into silence

            As silence swells into music from sorrow to joy

            


            copyright Harry Furness

            
For more from Harry visit his
            columns: now, December,
            then, before;
            and his poetry: December,
            then and before.
            Or his online home.