The Clay Road

Firestone Theatre is a figurative theatre. The audience are the readers. It is a medium for humankind to announce their presence, give their soliloquy, their argument if you will, and receive feedback from their other characters, cast members, directors and audience. The poems presented here and in the poetry of Isaacson are like mini speeches, without an address beforehand to announce to whom she speaks, but we feel indeed that each poem has been given special care, and the contents reverberate deeply within us so that we feel we are the intended recipient of her speech and kind words. 

The intended recipients have been reclusives, even monks, and those to whom exclusive power is their birthright, including kings, princes, and ministers. She is the preferred poet of convents, and the rejected poet of churches. Some claim her gift is from the divine, some claim it is evil and emanating from witchcraft. She alone must sound her horn and prove her worth, the valour that she carried as her standard, the fleur-de-lis.

"For the King, and for all England!" has sounded its revolution call to all who despair. We are not hopeless, nor wretched anymore. The anointing of heaven when it descends is no respecter of persons. It has filled the people of Canada with a victorious hope. We must plunge forward, and not for death but for life. We must lift the siege of hurtful words and broken promises . . . we must live as a covenant people. Our hope for a King carried us on as history nears the end of the empire of the Queen, the Royal Rose. She has not failed us, nor will she fail. She will live on as the Queen of distant lands and closer hearts.

Thistle manor, away off the moor,

here the thistle down blows . . .

and away lullaby, mother sing,

lullaby to a prince and a king.

Here there is no sense of repeat,

just a mild prickly pod bed,

enumerating the signs

of harvest to summer’s end.

The trees and the heather

all lean like the wind.

Eventually the thistle down speaks—

down, down, thistle moor,

dusting o’er the creaking floor

to the stone gorse garden door:

resurgence from poverty to kin,

from ignorance to education,

forgiving liniment

from within, cold without

from the imminent

moor fog, hazing our sight.

From cradle to Yule log,

burn foolish, burn bright!

Emily Isaacson

Isaacson's Hourglass is a work of the Commonwealth,

emblazoned with its symbols, character and resonance.

Written by Emily Isaacson, it is her latest work of art,

poetry in six sections. 

Isaacson's Hourglass details the poetry of a waning empire, 

on the verge of transformation.