Tending the Fire

Here's another poem from my 2007 book  Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky:

Tending the Fire

 

Still I am in the hands of the unknown God; he is breaking me down to his new oblivion...

                                                                                                            D.H.Lawrence

Don’t you love a good fire?

 

About every ten minutes,

add a small log.

Keep feeding it.

The heat must be intense enough,

constant enough,

steady enough

to set a husky arm of oak to

 burning from its core.

 

It’s messy work.

Grit from the twigs on the polished floor,

black soot from the poker

on my hands.

 

My father told me how to keep a fire burning.

Now he sits in the cold winter sunlight

at the Home,

when the sooty darkness

catches the twigs of day,

 

 

I sit before the fire in the dark living room,

on the floor before the fire,

feeding it,

watching it like a TV show about my

still burning, though crumbling love.

The flames orange my face.

Roaring silence

issues from their hunger.