TENDING A FIRE I THINK
OF YOU AND I TOGETHER

    1
The Great Bear near zenith,
Jupiter Mars Saturn Venus
stretched across the west.
The air is dry and clear,
and the sky new-moon dark
pulls in to it the lights of Amarillo
and will not give back the city's glow.

My lantern hisses.
My hearth heaped with cold ash,
ringed with blackened stones.
And here, ringed with ribs,
this ashy heart, the glow gone out,
its heat given back to the stars.

Fates in some quarters are drawn
in dances of planets and constellations.
But I don't believe in the cosmic superstition.
We make choices and try to minimize our losses.
Still we lose and hold on
to what is cold and ashy and gone.

Who knows how many chances we are given,
to raise our smoke-lidded eyes,
to feel on our face the warmth of a closer star
or a fire ring gone to coal glow
or the heat shimmer of skin to naked skin?


    2
You were young and lovely.
I was young and foolish.
Now you are older
and more beautiful, I'm sure.
And I, older, wonder
why I am still such a fool. 


    3
Once I preferred a fire clean and hot.
Now I'm willing to breath a little smoke,
let it stain my face and soak
into my beard and skin.
I don't fret so much over the creosote sting
or the residue that gathers in the corners of eyes
after a night's fitful solitary sleep.

There's beauty in smoke,
the way it spirals as it rises,
the way it braids blue with yellow flames
and defines and stains the bands of sunlight,
the way it carries the prayers of our futile yearnings,
the way it bears what we cannot bear to hold
and lets go of what we will not let go.
And there's wisdom in smoke that says
as long as we burn, we will always
be incomplete.


© 2002 by Richard W. Todd

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