Bosque Fire Shaman
It’s a coyote, isn’t it? A brave, dog-like creature in a cloak, bravely marching through the fire, waving its arm-legs in a gesture of healing that nobody can articulate or understand. It’s the embodiment of mystery – it’s not meant to be understood; it’s meant to be felt.
What do I feel when I look at this image of Meinrad’s? I feel a kind of divine sorcery is present, a mischievous expression of the ineffable. I feel joy, a delicious audacity and propulsion – looking at the image makes my body want to move like the shaman moves, to dance or march like the shaman marches. It must be because something in the way Meinrad made images connects not just to the mind but to the living body of the viewer. In the quiet moments of viewing this image, a part of me becomes the shaman coyote, recognises the part of myself that already is the shaman coyote.
Art doesn’t get any closer than that. When there’s this transubstantiation of what the artist has made into what the viewer experiences, the generous alacrity of art is known. What do I mean by that? I have no idea. It’s a felt sense that something is exchanged. If I try to analyse it, it dissolves.
This is the last of the ekphrastic poems I wrote in response to Meinrad’s work, published in Firebird. I loved her work from the first moment I came across it and as the years fly by, this love only deepens. That’s a beautiful thing to experience – a deepening love – and something of great value in a world on fire with its own lovelessness. Rest in peace, Meinrad Craighead, and thank you.
Bosque Fire Shaman
In Memoriam Meinrad Craighead
A local child made this story up –
the one about the fire shaman walking a tightrope.
If you’re still enough to listen,
you can hear the rope twanging and shivering in the heat.
There it is, look, stretched out across the burning treetops
like prayers trembling above war!
Hola, tightrope!
Hola, shaman!
The child says the shaman breathes with her feet,
inhales the hot, smoke-filled air and exhales the unbroken world
with every miraculous step.
She trots the tightrope as though it’s a wide, empty road.
There she goes, soothing from hot edge to hot edge.
The child says she’s a vessel for lost souls,
a glass of holy water tilted at the lip of tomorrow.
A striking poem and the last stanza go a deep into my soul 🙏