my fire eats everything

Though at first I was responsible

(flint spark to scaly schist

over dead twig and dry leaf),

just as a word, once spoken,

no longer belongs to it’s author - so this fire went free.

And now

 

My fire eats everything

 

Decaying heartwood of a

once hearty hemlock,

malignant maple or

aging oak,

young proud poplar

never thought he’d see the day -

my fire gladly receives and

gladly burns.

Eats 'em all up.

 

My fire remembers nothing.

Knows no language, age or fashion,

where it comes or

how it might should act.

Cares not for reason,

entertains no concept of progress and

never envies.

Only ever sings the timeless tune of

Cackle-spark and Flicker-flame.

And a fickle song indeed,

capable of sustaining life

on freezing winter nights,

capable of purifying water,

coal, gold, earth.

Capable of consuming entire

forests

mountains

homes and

villages.

Eats 'em all up.

 

 

My fire comes from a long line of fires:

heat for the first man

brother to the first rain

harbringer of illumination all types

and all gods fashioned in fire-likenesses:

From the earliest Pyrolaters

Tonatiuh for the Aztecs

Ra who oversaw the pyramids

Sacred flame of the Vestal Virgins

Bodhisattva of the sun 

and the burning bush to Moses spoke.

Fire who, once harnessed,

became the catalyst of modern man, the modern family

and modern warfare.

 

And for all this I ask,

“who is the God of fire?”

 

Which upon hearing nothing

I return to sitting

and thinking how

Dark the night,

how silent the world,

save for the cackling of

my fire.  My fire who eats everything

- there see it!

See it in the night.

Watch it flicker,

spark defiant,

watch it something fierce

piercing scalding warnings toward

the whole world of darkness

unafraid.  As if to say,

"I was not the first, nor

will be the last."

And issuing me now a boon

in the form of a spark.

My fire eats everything

and when my fire finally dwindles

the universe sleeps.