Campfire Magic
The magic of a campfire enfolds us as we sit and gaze
bringing out the muse in us while we stare into the blaze;
Mem'ries and ideas spring forth both one and the same,
our thoughts dance around, as we watch the playful flame.
Poem Index
[Click on underlined titles to read the poem.]
Embrace the Sparks; Trish Iwanski
The Old Camp Fire
Pecos Higgins
[Copied with same spelling and punctuation as written by Pecos Higgins]
[1]
There is something about a Camp Fire
That a lot of Folks don't know,
They are in to much of a Hurry
And a Camp Fire is some times slow.
They are a Very old invention
And have Been used for many years
Invented by the Lord and the Indians
Out on the Wide Frontiers.
[2]
The Red Man did Not have any matches
Just a Flint and a Steel was all.
They Will work-for I have used them
In the days when I was small.
They have Never changed their Model,
They are like they all ways wuz,
And used out in the stillness
Far away from Noise and Buzz.
[3]
Many smart men done their thinking
By a camp fire Warm and Bright,
Many Cowboys thawed their Bodies out
On a cold and Winterey Night.
The Old Timers used them at Camp Meetings
Where they Gathered to Praise their God
And Prayed for their children to do so
Long after they was under the sod.
[4]
The Camp fire and the Camp Meetings
Are still on earth to stay
They was invented by Our Saviour
From Back in the early day
Come Help us enjoy the Camp fire
With fellowship, Poems and Song
And Jesus, Your Friend, as true to you
As the summer days are long.
Christmas Round the Campfire
Rod Nichols, used by permission.
When it's Christmas round the campfire
and the twilight's growin' dim
blue shadows fallin' 'cross the trail
and it's time for headin' in
We'll draw up round the circle
'neath a big ole western sky
content to share this special time
while the outside world drifts by.
When it's Christmas round the campfire
and the blaze is cracklin' so
the stars spread out forever
in a great celestial show,
We'll start to sing old carols
in a rev'rent sort of way
'bout silent nights and Bethlehem
and a manger far away.
When it's Christmas round the campfire
and the prairie seems asleep
and the wind picks up and moves about
while an owl her vigil keeps,
We'll pause a bit and listen
to the songs that nature sings
while they, like us, in their own way
celebrate the newborn king.
FIRESIDE WINDIES
S. Omar Barker - Cowboy Poetry, Classic Rhymes
Now cowboys 'round the fire at night,
They tell it wide and high
Of Broncs they've rode, and gals they've kissed
In other days gone by.
Till by the time the fire goes down
And all hands hit the straw,
They've rode more broncs and kissed more gals
Than a cowboy ever saw.
THE OLD CAMP-FIRE
Bret Harte
Now shift the blanket pad before your saddle back you fling,
And draw your cinch up tighter till the sweat drops from the ring:
We've a dozen miles to cover ere we reach the next divide.
Our limbs are stiffer now than when we first set out to ride,
And worse, the horses know it, and feel the leg-grip tire,
Since in the days when, long ago, we sought the old camp-fire.
Yes, twenty years! Lord! how we 'd scent its incense down the trail,
Through balm of bay and spice of spruce, when eye and ear would fail,
And worn and faint from useless quest we crept, like this, to rest,
Or, Rushed with luck and youthful hope, we rode, like this, abreast.
Ay! straighten up, old friend, and let the mustang think he 's nigher,
Through looser rein and stirrup strain, the welcome old camp-fire.
You know the shout that would ring out before us down the glade,
And start the blue jays like a fight of arrows through the shade,
And sift the thin pine needles down like slanting, shining rain,
And send the squirrels scampering back to their holes again,
Until we saw, blue-veiled and dim, or leaping like desire,
That flame of twenty years ago, which lit the old camp-fire.
And then that rest on Nature's breast, when talk had dropped, and slow
The night wind went from tree to tree with challenge soft and low!
We lay on lazy elbows propped, or stood to stir the flame,
Till up the soaring redwood's shaft our shadows danced and came,
As if to draw us with the sparks, high o'er its unseen spire,
To the five stars that kept their ward above the old camp-fire,--
Those picket stars whose tranquil watch half soothed, half shamed our sleep.
What recked we then what beasts or men around might lurk or creep ?
We lay and heard with listless ears the far-off panther's cry,
The near coyote's snarling snap, the grizzly's deep-drawn sigh,
The brown bear's blundering human tread, the gray wolves' yelping choir
Beyond the magic circle drawn around the old camp-fire.
And then that morn! Was ever morn so filled with all things new?
The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue,
The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call,
The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall,
The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier,
Till flashing leaped the torch of day from last night's old camp-fire!
Well, well! we'll see it once again; we should be near it now;
It 's scarce a mile to where the trail strikes off to skirt the slough,
And then the dip to Indian Spring, the wooded rise, and--strange!
Yet here should stand the blasted pine that marked our farther range;
And here-what 's this? A ragged swale of ruts and stumps and mire!
Sure this is not the sacred grove that hid the old camp-fire!
Yet here's the " blaze " I cut myself, and there's the stumbling ledge,
With quartz " outcrop " that lay atop, now leveled to its edge,
And mounds of moss-grown stumps beside the woodman's rotting chips,
And gashes in the hillside, that gape with dumb red lips.
And yet above the shattered wreck and ruin, curling higher-
Ah yes!--still lifts the smoke that marked the welcome old camp-fire!
Perhaps some friend of twenty years still lingers there to raise
To weary hearts and tired eyes that beacon of old days.
Perhaps-but stay; 't is gone! and yet once more it lifts as though
To meet our tardy blundering steps, and seems to move, and lo!
Whirls by us in a rush of sound,--the vanished funeral pyre
Of hopes and fears that twenty years burned in the old camp-fire!
For see, beyond the prospect spreads, with chimney, spire, and roof,--
Two iron bands across the trail clank to our mustang's hoof;
Above them leap two blackened threads from limb-lopped tree to tree,
To where the whitewashed station speeds its message to the sea.
Rein in! Rein in! The quest is o'er. The goal of our desire
Is but the train whose track has lain across the old camp-fire !