Poetry by Rebecca Brown

Circling

We saw you circling,

we saw you soar and dive

We wished that we could be more like you,

more alive

We love you,

I hope you know we love you

We saw you circling -

sometimes we’d call you down

Come plant your feet with ours

here firmly on the ground

We love you,

I hope you know we love you

Darlin’ we all need love, we all have pain

And we all get knocked down and must get up again

If you had let us in, we might have seen you through

But you just flashed that grin and then away you flew

We saw you circling,

we thought it was a game

Then like a weary moth,

you dove into the flame

We love you,

I hope you know we love you

I pray you know we love you

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the blaze

every measure of what we thought we were

every dance around each tangible delight

empty pleasures now dissolve into a blur

as my soul’s true lover draws me from this night

so i must adjust my eyes to fix my gaze

upon this road, this waiting new frontier

being now illuminated by the blaze

from behind, of everything I once held dear

and i am shaking

or, is the earth beneath my feet?

i am not making my way alone

and there is weeping

but the tears are bittersweet

as the sculptor’s hands are chipping at the stone

as i am running,

and not only just away, never turning, and taking nothing with me

i am running

into the dawning of the day

not turning back to see the burning city

______________________________________________________________________

this face

oh, it’s an incredible face…

…but i should look away

this face has power to hypnotize

it calls like the sirens

enchanting me off my course

to be dashed upon the rocks

and drown

in the deep brown

of his eyes

______________________________________________________________________

the fire

this is the fire

you stand in close proximity as if it warms you

but do you feel it?

i’ll hold it higher

perhaps to shed some light on what you might be thinking

you don’t reveal it

so closed, sealed as tight as tombs

are the doors to all the rooms in your heart

do i see a flicker in your eyes?

let me, please, before it dies, fan this spark

i want to talk about it

what are your dreams, am i in them?

who is your god, where does it hurt,

what do you want, do you need, do you fear…

but you won’t hear me

we speak of items in the news

does that seem safe to you? do i seem scary?

this is the fire

i would walk through it with bare feet

the only thing that scares me is this mortuary

where all is still, there is no life, oh, i can’t breathe

the power of your silence makes me weak

here i wait for you to speak – no, i’m not dying,

no, i’m just learning

this is the fire

how do you stand so close and stay so cool

am i the only one that’s burning?

I was writing verse by the time I could read and was singing it even before then—from TV jingles to Nat King Cole. A Texas girl, I left home at 18 and began performing my own songs as chick singer in a hippie band. After some time, and with two daughters to raise, I abandoned the life of a starving artist and made a good career in the business end of the music business in Nashville. I left the corporate world a few years ago to again pursue my art, thanks to a patron of the arts—my husband. Today I write, sing, paint a little, and play a lot—with the joys of my life, my daughters and grandsons. Some say I’ve started my artist career way too late in life. I say I come from a long line of late bloomers. www.Beckabrown.com

Click here to watch Rebecca Brown sing her lyric Spring Fever