Here’s another poem from my 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.
Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky 