Rise Up - 24" x 48", Acrylic on Fir, $3,700

When Fire Made Smoke

He rose up through her like a messenger

His life transformed came like a prayer from her

Of Peace after charred remains and at an age that could not find reason

She could only find treason, so she burnt inside out for him

And she said to him,

‘Rise up out of the ashes as many times as you find that spark that keeps you alive’

And that fire became smoke like a Spirit Messenger into the air

And spoke of all the wounded stories that have stared off

From deep inside the mind’s eye and speak for miles into the sky

In Blue to White inside a cloud’s prayer North to the Creator

Seen from far below of how the Heart and Spirit of life can disappear

Given it was lit, from red to blue released then sent

Carrying the past into dreams of I knew you

And I am because of how I grew from the warmth of stories beside you

And the ones who fought for what they knew

Had kept the stories close and raw in words that traveled a clear view

But time has a way of hardening those words down to a few

And then adding more that are untrue

Like those from a hot age that kept burning anew

When smoke overwhelms a world who can’t hear

Minds close into a coward’s curl of what’s justified and smoothed into whirls

And then fire and smoke become the lovers that hate brokered

And the wars that are started in that embrace become too painful to choke down

Where lies are flung and a people are kept in poverty and

The heart loses its battle to speak a tongue of truth when voices are smothered

When all that’s heard cannot be repeated and all that’s done is mistreated

And the tradition of story cannot be carried through from the places where they originally grew

When books are bound up and shelved into the pureness of children’s minds

So that living side by side on white pages means telling lies

When history is burned up and never learned up on the edges of each of the white centuries

And what keeps getting stolen are the stories of the children on those red pages

Hunted, stolen, shaved and beaten, torn inside their minds, raped and killed and buried

For refusing the a b c’s and one two three’s on white pages in those same schooled places

Where those bound up could not find reason and passion honed into one

Of heart and mind living side by side like smoke and fire and like the sun

Then those stories must

‘Rise up out of the ashes as many times as you find that spark that keeps you alive’

And find the Four races speaking in a dream that one was missing in its team

Like the thunder needed for the lightning,

For all the voices were being heard except for the Red Fire

That this history is better written and taught in the thunder who grew up around its strike.

LauraLee K. Harris