GENTLE SPIRIT SORROW-FED

GENTLE SPIRIT SORROW-FED

Emily Pauline Johnson, who also published under her Mohawk name Tekahionwake, was born on on the Six Nations Reserve, Canada West, in 1861. A poet, artist, and performer, she is the author of three collections of poetry. She died in 1913 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Occasionally, the website poem-a-day floors you with something truly beautiful. I love this poem of assurance and renewal—a poem of Spring and all the hope it brings, ‘Where life revives, and blossoms once again.’ Love, Susie x

Fire-Flowers

And only where the forest fires have sped, Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands, A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head, And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed, It hides the scars with almost human hands.

And only to the heart that knows of grief, Of desolating fire, of human pain,

There comes some purifying sweet belief, Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief. And life revives, and blossoms once again.

Emily Pauline Johnson