The Fire Poem

Note that the fire
consumes not itself,
but what is cast there:
Into it.

or
Note: That the fire
consumes
only what is brought to it.
Note
from Eckhart, who had watched fires,
warmed body and spirit there
—spiritu in corpore—
who had seen
clearly that the natural life
relates
to the divine
or given
through
not always a correlation.
It is dangerous to assume
the ecology
of these things.
But it is the time of fire
and its sometime fuel.

2

That at night
the fire
sinks
down
is rescued
only
by the morning log
in nick of time
to
renew itself
go out
through radiance
the high intention
glowing/
/in fruition.

3

At Twelfth Night's burning
of the greens
there is
more than cleanliness:
To destroy
more than the ritual implies—
some old urge
ancestry
to show the face of one man
to another
in the darkness.
That fire purifies
is no mistake:
fructifies
nor that it claims the sun
light
in a little place—
this hard-cored-coal.

4

But to break loose again—
the finger length
flame
following
underground
the source of roots—
suddenly
whirls up
catches in the high trees
a crown fire
rising
with the wind.

5

or one
small
votive
light