The Metaphysics of Fire
Jan 28 3014


It's too cold
even for dogs.
Who wait by the door
with a predator’s patient calm,
enveloped in breath, ears erect
alert for motion.

Whose wet persistent noses

push hungrily in
through the narrow aperture,
frugally inched
against the arctic blast.
Bee-line
to the stove's hypnotic heat,

where they sprawl on the floor

like abstract art,

body parts

inter-twined, and overlapped.
Where they stretch, lick, yawn,

meticulously tongue
matted coats, ice-slicked paws,

a heap of well-used rugs

in motley browns
shades of black.
And wag for treats,

an entitlement

as automatic as breathing.

They have never felled, split, hauled
or piled.
Have no notion
of combustion science,

ignition, fuel, fire.

All they know
is the house if warm, the outside cold.

And that we all belong inside,
this blended family
of 2-legged creatures
and them

looking up from theirs,

who can't count, anyway.
Which is as it's always been
since they were tiny mewling pups,
deaf and blind
and first opened their eyes
to us.

The metaphysics of fire
the great given of life.
No question asked
explanation required.

I've gone a little dry recently: writing poorly; and not much new to say, or needs saying. So what else to do but defer to my usual basic defaults: weather poems, and dog poems. Here, I've managed to include both!

Dogs live in the present. They do not agonize over meaning, metaphysics, identity. Life is as given; and they accept, no question.

The poem began with me wondering what my dog thinks when she watches me light a fire. Am I a magician, a god, who can strike heat and light from a small wooden stick? Or does the question even arise? Does the exercise of such agency even make sense to her? Because I think lighting a fire involves the same kind of indirect agency as the TV remote -- action at a distance, an inexplicable connection between act and result, which I'm positive she'll never get.

And it also began with me wondering: does she ever consider who and what I am, and why I have always been here, with her? Or consider the source of her providence: the fridge, the bag of kibble, the central heat? Of course she doesn't! And it's not that I want her to be as caught up in her head as I am in mine; I'm just wondering if there's a glimmer of introspection. The real truth is that I envy the blithe serenity of her acceptance; her perfect complacency with things as they are. (Not to mention envy her obliviousness to death. Although this envy comes with some ambivalence, since isn't it foreknowledge of death that gives life its urgency and sweetness?)

So this poem is about the world view of a dog. It's about the life of comfort and ease -- where the house is warm and the fire lit, and where the expected treat always materializes -- that I am privileged and pleased to give her.

( ...Although perhaps I'm insufficiently grateful, because I suppose there are insecure and neurotic dogs who seem to worry and second guess as much as we humans do!)