Beltane Morning Burning

Put it down to a May squall.

The new air of new life, what is earned with years

of winter. These days

you place your faith in acts

and matches, Arcadia

might be both sides of the grass

but only if you claw your way

and bring the right fuel—

gather all those histories in paper

to cast upon the flames.

For years they have clung

to basement dust, blighting the air

with their tendrils of trauma:

the stalkers, the abusers, the ones

who earned their own files.

Today, in the back garden,

glinting in a sea of dandelions,

you feed red the flames
with the pages of your past,

watching as they curl to ash.

A Beltane morning burning.

Send it off to the Four Great Winds.

Transmuted by the Spirit of Fire.

To cleanse the present

of the past

so there will be

only we two

and the sun above the cove

and all the colour and all the light

and each day a new day

like this one
now.

                           So let it burn.