.

Fire Lurks

I recognize, while watching ghastly night
Encircle statesmanship revoltingly,
Bright bursts of a spangled pyrotechnic star.
America! No star, a land’s lost light.
Companions, look and say if you can see
The common faith that made us what we are.

You patriots intrepid, rise and try
To tell what blasts your households must withstand.
Insipid others, what’s worth fighting for?
A sea of troubles and a stormy sky?
Well, I see fire. True friends, behold my land
And yours with much to build and to restore.

Hear your country’s Constitution call you
To active virtue ere much worse befall you,
For only they have rights who dare maintain them;
Let rulers be unseated who disdain them.

Land of the south, sweet warmth invigorate;
Land of the north, fair commerce cultivate.
Land of the west, wild yearning satisfy;
Land of the east, pure law revivify.
Islands and borders, our sovereignty protect;
Heartland and cities, refine our intellect.

States, in service to your people, leave
Them fervent in achievements and belief,
With hope our greatness we may yet retrieve.

.

.

Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable wrk in homeschooling for her own family and others.

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30 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Margaret, your greatness in your poetry is as pronounced as the esthetically pleasing flow and rhyme of a river, yet deep as an ocean. I can feel the currents of your thoughts that are interpolated in my mind and carry me to a host of images waiting on the shores.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Roy, what a lovely metaphorical reply of praise! I’m glad my currents of thought expressed here are leading readers to see the fire in America, each looking where he or she recognizes it. It’s an “open” poem in that way, which I think is good for a poem on our land. There is so much to see. And thanks for employing water imagery, which is in my mind too because I’ve lived on both ocean shores and near five great rivers.

      Reply
  3. Cynthia Erlandson

    This is beautiful, Margaret. The first verse really grabbed my attention, particularly your allusions to our national anthem — the scrambling of “spangled” and “star” in the third line, and “look and say if you can see” in the fifth. “The common faith that made us what we are” is a heart-wrenching line, and says so much in so few words.
    It is often a temptation to wonder, “what’s worth fighting for?” But, as you’ve shown us here, we have to hope and pray that we may, indeed, retrieve our greatness.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Cynthia, for seeing beauty here, and for noticing the national anthem. It is a “common faith that made us what we are,” and you are right about that line being heart-wrenching, because common faith in the nation and for its future is one kind of fire too little seen today. Too many fellow Americans are caught up in storms and troubles and think it’s too late to fight for anything. We may not retrieve greatness, but why not support those leading us to try, like Trump getting up from the assassination attempt and saying, “Fight!” There’s greatness in the patriotic effort, and as you say, hope and prayer fight along with faith.

      Reply
  4. Russel Winick

    Margaret — If the political class would read your lovely, brilliant poem, then perhaps it would become a bit more likely that this country’s greatness is revivified. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Russel, for your appreciation of the poem. As you noticed, I did open with criticism of the political class for a lack of fire and light in statesmanship. Restoring the country’s greatness is, of course, a motto of Donald Trump. Evan Mantyk scheduled this poem for the day when the Republican convention would (and did) nominate him for President. No one had any idea that there would be an attempt on his life two days earlier, but his defiant response could be called “bright bursts of a spangled pyrotechnic star.” Wonderful how this poem which you have called “brilliant” could reflect more American fireworks than I had in mind.

      Reply
  5. Warren Bonham

    Beautiful as always and message received. We can’t just sit back and hope. We must actively do something to maintain the rights we have always enjoyed.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      I’m happy you liked it, Warren! This is indeed a time for active service in the most important public office, that of the private citizen.

      Reply
  6. Joseph S. Salemi

    The implied wordplay of “Fire Lurks” with “fireworks” is the hinge on which this poem swings. Is it a simile? No. Is it a metaphor? Yes, but in a roundabout manner.

    When Margaret writes “Well, I see fire,” the hinge swings, and suddenly “a spangled pyrotechnic star” becomes the real possibility of warfare. The speaker does not wish this, since the fourth section of the poem clearly calls for national unity. So what is the “fire” in this piece? It is many things: the anger of patriots, the gunshots of past battles that made us, the “rockets’ red glare” of the cannonade at Fort McHenry, modern Fourth-of-July fireworks — all of these things are bubbling like hot lava in the poem, almost like a traditional conceit that has lost control of itself.

    I don’t think such a poem could be written (or understood) at any other time but right now, in the agonized state of turmoil that is our country.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Joe, thanks for an interpretation that wasn’t in my mind–namely the real possibility of warfare when “I see fire.” I’m very glad you pointed that out. Interpretations come from good reading based on the words, not on what the poet intended or tried to say. A poet can’t limit legitimate interpretations of his or her words. As you say, our country is in an agonized state of turmoil, which makes “fire” meaning warfare one among possibilities you suggest. I did as well hope to criticize the lack of fire in the blindness of “insipid others,” contrasted to awareness of “intrepid patriots” and to the speaker who sees fire. You are correct that “fire” is the operative metaphor, even in the latter portions of the poem that don’t mention it. But “land” is the other significant word, appearing more often than “fire” and associated descriptive words. “Land” acts as unifier for the poem even as its divisions and particular desirable virtues are enumerated. It seems we cannot hope that feeling for the land will pervade all its people, but may determined ones find that feeling a source of strength.

      Reply
  7. Laura

    Fitting words not only for this month of July, but for this political season that is in full swing. I read this poem a few times, and each time, a new perspective was added. The work drew me in.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Laura! A poem for and about our country can allow many individual perspectives to be seen. I’m happy this one drew you in and offered varied ways to look around you in this political season.

      Reply
  8. Sally Cook

    Margaret, the classic interweaving you employ of symbol metaphor. and allusion combine to make for a marvelous poem.
    Thank you for putting so much into one poem.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Sally! Our country deserves a poem of richest interweaving. America itself interweaves much glorious fire in land and people.

      Reply
  10. Brian A. Yapko

    What a wonderful and inspiring poem, Margaret — one which, though you have not explicitly invoked God, starts as something of a challenge and then ultimately reads much like a prayer. I’m especially considering your invocation of the four diretions which parallels Native American Indian prayers that I have heard — extremely appropriate for a poem which is about America — all that it has been and could be again. You speak of faith as essential to our freedom. I note the allusion to the Star Spangled Banner “look and say if you can see…” I enjoy the pyrotechnic pun of the title and the imagery you present, but there is one phrase that actually struck me as the heart of the poem: “Well, I see fire.” And the sense I get is a holy fire, a fire that does not consume but purifies and burns in hearts and creates rather than destroys. It’s quite wonderful.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Brian. “Well, I see fire” can be called “heart of the poem” as you do here, or “hinge” as Joseph Salemi did above. It may be worthwhile to refer to an earlier patriotic poem that was in my heart when I wrote this. I had been reading this kind of work by American poets, and probably everyone noted the bits I borrowed from Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner,” our national anthem. Sidney Lanier wrote an extended composition during the 1876 Centennial Year, including a sequence of 8 sonnets on Columbus. In the next-to-last one, Columbus and crew see what turns out to be a mirage on the western horizon, where they are looking for land. This is a discouraging disappointment that casts doubt on the purpose of their voyage and on their own credibility. In the final sonnet, Columbus alone sees a light, and calls two men to confirm his vision. The first man agrees that there may be a light “like land,” but the second says nothing is there. Columbus firmly declares, “Well, I saw it.” At that moment, their sister ship the Pinta fires a gun, indicating that men aboard her have indeed sighted land. This is the culmination of Lanier’s sequence, giving Columbus credit as first to see America. He interprets what he sees as “dawn in the west.”

      I use “Well, I see fire” as an assertion of seeing bursts of light from a star, a light that now could appear to have been lost. It’s a challenge, as you say, to those who don’t or won’t see the fire. Joe Salemi gives several ideas of what the fire is. In contrast to one of his suggestions (that the fire indicates a real possibility of warfare), you, Brian, see a holy, purifying, and creative fire. Lanier’s Columbus, when he sees the star or light, immediately exclaims, “Maria!” She is the Star of the Sea to mariners. You and Lanier are closer to what I was thinking as I wrote, but as I told Joe, his interpretation, based on the poem’s words, is just as valid.

      I put “fire” in my title, but as I explained to Joe, I put more “land” in the poem. You notice the cardinal directions, and there’s still more in “islands” and “heartland.” Land unifies those who love it and know it as their own, but in these days it does seem to lack much of the fire that is appropriate and desirable. The latter portions of the poem call it forth. Faith is also a fire, not only essential to freedom as you say, but according to the poem, common faith made us what we are.

      Reply
  11. Jeff Eardley

    Margaret, a lovely poem of hope for your great nation in these troubled times. The Stars and Stripes will forever be a symbol of freedom.
    Thank you.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Jeff, for seeing this as a poem of hope for a great nation. We have “much to build and to restore,” but there is goodness and honour in all the many portions of this land where I have lived and visited. We can be great again, starting from ideals early championed in your great nation, where I feel very much at home.

      Reply
  12. Daniel Kemper

    Ibid on the craft. What I like most is the agonistes of positivism that it presents. We seem to be living, maybe, in a time parallel to Balaam’s.

    Something about the flow of these first three lines hits some really, really pleasing notes to my ear.

    “I recognize, while watching ghastly night
    Encircle statesmanship revoltingly,
    Bright bursts of a spangled pyrotechnic star.”

    And it’s true– as the poem gets at later– our time is characterized by a weird paralysis. So strange.

    I know I’m jumping around a lot; thanks in advance for bearing with me.

    Reply
  13. Margaret Coats

    Daniel, thank you for an intriguing critical contribution–and I have a most favorable view of critical insight! The mention of the Biblical Balaam brightens my perspective. He (unwilling to prophesy good to Israel as he was) could do nothing else. He saw the star rise from Jacob, and it must be that star in particular that brought him to mind. The speaker in this poem sees a star that is in fact fire, good or bad, holy or not. But somehow the poem’s discourse necessarily turns to the preservation and appreciation of beauties in our regional and national heritage. And, I think, does so with something of a metaphysical ideal. That is, when you say “agonistes of positivism,” you describe the present “weird paralysis” that does not see beyond the “ghastly” and “revolting” apparent background in my first lines. I imagine they pleased you as truth.

    The speaker as Balaam must frame words in accord with heavenly inspiration. This is where I believe your addition of Scripture to history helps much more to escape despairing interpretation of this work. It does have some such potential, but mainly because others seem unable to see with Balaam. They are not inspired. But the prophet has “true friends” and fellow countrymen who can follow the turn to the land, with all its sweet warmth, fairness, adventure, and potential for purity, sovereignty, and learning.

    Please see what I said above to Brian Yapko on the Sidney Lanier piece about the vision of Columbus. Being a Marian devotee with the Santa Maria as his flagship, Columbus was a seer inclined to vision that included the beneficial, maternal aspect of his western adventure. When you said “Balaam,” I immediately thought of what may be a catacomb painting of him, where the star he points to is a Madonna and Child. Let that appear to the “wild yearning” of us westerners as well.

    See what jumping around a lot can lead to, and thanks again!

    Reply
  14. C.B. Anderson

    The first stanza, by itself, would be a remarkable feat of poetic outreach. But then the poem continues, to draw out every possible aspect of consanguinity. Bloody perfect!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, C. B. I very much value your judgment. It is a considerable achievement to begin effectively, and rare to follow on so in every possible aspect. Our country and consanguinity offer a splendid opportunity.

      Reply
  15. Lucia Haase

    I love how you express this. I’m hoping and praying for a better
    outcome in November.

    Thanks for the read.

    Lucia

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Hope and prayers exercise our common faith. Do some active campaigning too if you are able. Every registration and every vote counts. Thank you for taking time to read and respond to this vision and these hopes of mine.

      Reply
  16. Adam Sedia

    You give us a very heartening call for unity and a much-needed reminder of the massively important things we all have in common. I wish I could say I share the optimism of this poem.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      I wish the same, Adam. Patriotic optimism is guarded in good times, because it’s only realistic to understand ever-present threats. Still, searching for the star and seeing its fire and acting with that warmth is the best option in good times and bad.

      Reply

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