Four Poems
Four Poems: The Australia Times Interview with Ian Prattis
Short Bio
Dr. Ian Prattis is an award winning author of fourteen books. Recent awards include Gold for fiction at the 2015 Florida Book Festival, 2015 Quill Award from Focus on Women magazine and Silver for Environment from the 2014 Living Now Literary Awards. Julia Ann Charpentier says his: “admirable command of language brings to every scene a striking visual clarity.” Of his Gold for Redemption Anita Rizvi calls it “a riveting novel chronicling one man's journey through the stages of innocence, darkness, destruction and transformation.” She goes on to say, “What is so exquisite is the tenderness and honesty with which the author deals with the human condition . . . he refuses to ‘sanitize’ experience.” He depicts the stations of a personal Calvary that ultimately leads to Redemption. His poetry, memoirs, fiction, articles, blogs and podcasts appear in a wide range of venues.
Full Profile at https://www.ianprattis.com
Dancing Trees
Silver birches silhouette the sky
Gather in numbers,
Silently,
Elegantly, grace “en pointe.”
Sway and breathe
Bend and whisper
Leaves shimmer.
They dance to gathering wind.
Murmur Creation’s tones
In synchrony with stellar rhythms,
Their sound carries waves
Rolling into shoreline rocks.
Silver birches silhouette the sky
Silver beauties
dance for us.
Dancing trees
Lament For a Mariner
The sea is very thin this day
that Archie Ruag has gone.
Master mariner, graceful navigator,
wise teacher of ocean mystery.
No more to grace the ocean’s ships
returned to whence he came.
My sons at eleven years and ten
children in men’s mourning
saw him laid to rest
in my place.
Storms and hail swept the cemetery
and their small frames
grew in maturing
of Archie’s dying.
And I sit here in Canada
writing, grieving,
Knowing the sea is very thin this day
that Archie Ruag has gone.
I saw him last, pale and weary
with calm before his death.
His spirit surrounded by antiseptic ward,
but not beleaguered.
He knows I was not equal
to his dying.
So he spoke gently to me
of ships
and men at sea.
And moorings
safe to guard our boats
from winter’s cruelty.
And so, in this way
did he gently rebuke
my lack of courage
in his dying.
So that I may have strength
in my own time
of death.
Yet I miss him.
An anchor gone from my seasons
of the sea.
The sea is very thin this day.
Vietnam War Memorial
Gaunt with grief:
Motionless:
Stilled, Silenced:
Cold December day:
Grey and bleak.
I could not move:
Stunned:
Frozen in Time:
Unbelieving:
Damn it all!
Damn!
It!
All!
It was not my war
don’t you know?
They were not my people
don’t you see?
Do I protest too much?
Name engraved black marble slabs
rising from the earth
sear into my soul.
Burning deep to feel the pain,
of so many deaths, such futility.
Ball of fire flames my chest,
chills the marrow of my bones.
Subterranean edifice hurts me awake,
transforms deep memories
for my own kind.
Fellow Humans.
Americans,
Vietnamese,
All peoples
caught in the sinister web
of dark and deadly shadows
that lurk in all of us:
Hate, Greed and Power.
I circle the profanity of war,
nerve center of our world.
Grimly aware thought:
Our world must be transformed:
Our world must be changed:
And we must do it.
Transforming ourselves
then others in swift urgency.
Else the memoirs
of our civilization
are no more than
Monuments To The Dead.
Our Dead:
Yours
And
Mine.
Weaving
Let me share it -
This symphony of autumn color,
cascading melody from a sky
pastel grey and fiery red.
Descant to the dancing tones of
a painted forest
cooled by lush evergreens.
Sensual beauty,
rhapsody of forest and sunset sky
fused as a golden sheen.
Caught in a still lake
waiting with patience
Beyond time and space,
Waiting
to reflect this moment of
splendor –
Weaving.
Let me share it.