Today we will be reading a poem from one of my favorite authors, Maria Steinburg-Piccadilly, an eloquent poetess and Earth Child who spent the gloaming of her life, as she referred to it, right here in Reno. As we listen, let us ponder not only the miracle of human speech to evoke pleasure and pain, but also the mystery of the dolphin that squeak in happiness or abject terror and the whale that moan and chuckle.
This Fair Oak
River-by run
Run-me-by men
Rappist I cried
Hate in thine eye
Smoke in eye my
Reek s/he said
Rope they wept
Fair oaken fire
Does not rhyme.
Maria Steinburg-Piccadilly
This is a non-rhyming poem that deals with a dark and horrifying emotion: the mixture of impotent rage and frustration that a person might feel, for example, who has been unjustly accused of maleficium necromancy and is about to be burned alive at the stake. All of us have experienced this kind of negative emotion, and many have managed to find refuge from their bad feelings in poems like this one. I personally enjoy reading this poem when people have said hurtful things about me and I don’t know why. However we go about it, sooner or later we have to begin the healing process.