Fire

Fire is important.

In every honest man
An ancient thought flickers
And makes him lean forward.

Cautionary tales
Are told in shadow,
Cast against stone walls and leaning timber.

Confusion; anger; fear; woundedness;
And all manner of self-having —
Pillars of heartfelt honesty, all.

But young men must be taught:

There is no negotiation
In fire; in warmth; in keeping.

Every man who
Buckles his children into car seats
Or weighs vocation against calling
Must have at the ready
A plan of some kind
For producing fire against the cold

Should there come the suddenness of
Impassable roads in winter;

A season of ditches;

The hungry eyes of clever wolves;

The long and empty night
Of missed trains.

Fear is fine then,
But hands must move,
Find pockets full of tinder and spark,
And pathways forward through the dark.

You will write the epic poem after;
Feel the feelings, face the facts;
Paint the painting; sing the song
Of shepherds singing
As each demon is repulsed, vanquished
To the inner layers of hell itself;

But first — always first —

Fire. Fire against the night.
Fire against the jungle walls.
Fire against the truth of your own failing.
Fire against the faults of plans unraveled,
And dreams dried up.
Fire against embarrassments,
And the wisdom of this fatherless world
That has never been your friend.

Your first duty is to hope,
Always— always —
Hope, and grace, and truth, and love,
And the light they pour
Into the dark.

You must learn to stir embers
And converse with others near the gold-lit edges
While the ones you love are sleeping.

You must learn to laugh when nothing near you laughs
And other things are seething.

A list of things to know about fire:
It is not it’s own reward.
It does not fill accounts or reward performance.
It does not thrive on desire or good intentions.
It does not survive because of fame, or power, or wealth, or good standing.
It does not derive itself from you, but lives in spite of any striving.

It respects a pocket full of cotton swabs and water-proof matches
More than it will ever respect you,
The miles you drag behind you like a pile of chains,
Your weariness,
Or the beauty of your baby son, the goodness of your wife.

Considered Birds

All the birds of the fields consider me,
My posture;
My approximations.

They bathe, half-attendant.

From puddles,
They observe.

I pull my weight upward
Against a lattice of sunlight.

I cough
Ruined engines,
Haul them from my pockets;
Drop them on the shore
Of blacktop meeting shoulder.

The weight of their absence
Describes a golden circle
Around each graveled foot.

God wonders, then,
What weight remains in my shoes
When each step
Pulls a clutch of root and soft tissue from the earth.

I wonder if birds know sadnesses,

Or only differences

In slants of light and shadow;
The presence of passing where
None is normally found.

Then again, in far-apart counties,
Where barn-sides and tree-haunted silos
Lean against our decades,
These endless nights are only moments
To the fields, the mills and rail beds, neighborhoods,
Meanderings
That pass beneath each wing and life-thin clavicle.

I dreamt on my feet, often,
While passing through;
Dreams of barbicans holding moments to themselves.
Dreams of intermingled names
And avenues,
A complication of trackage rights;
An excited dread
Of distant mountains rising up against
The drought of flatlands and horizon
Heading west. And me in no way ready.

When those dreams came, I learned
To shake myself awake
And simply drop. I learned to stare at birds,
Unnerve them in the dawn.

Those well-considered birds
Then rose up unannounced and moved among the clouds
And gathered
Onto the rooftops of houses I have never owned,
Outside of windows never mine.

Their wings were cirrus clouds the clear moon
Shone through;
Stealed away through;
In times and places
Where journeys
Through the wilderness are not necessary,
Shining in the rain through safety glass,
And very far away.

It’s as wearisome, as good,
As anything else planned all along in the mind of God
While we were alone, in the dark,
And had no control of our arms, our legs.