Consumed by Fire - Dec 20 2022

 

Consumed by Fire 🔥

Dec 20 2022

It must be prehistoric

the hold fire has on us,

an ancestral memory

we carry from birth.

I gaze into its dancing flames,

eyes rapt

heat soaking in.

The effect is hypnotic

and I'm an automaton,

feeding it fuel

stoking it higher.

How fascinated we are,

how tempted

by its power.

Animals use tools,

even have opposable thumbs.

They plan and remember,

mourn the dead,

feel love.

But only we captured fire,

aspired to the sun

and made off with its prize.

Which, like all great riches

both empowers and consumes.

My wood-stove

glowing invitingly,

its soft flickering light

warming the room.

And the forest

reduced to ash.

The burning cross

of the Ku Klux Klan.

The fire-bombed city

still smouldering,

a wasteland

of smoking ruins

and badly charred remains.

An agonized grimace

seared in

to the faces of the dead,

their final seconds spent

desperately gasping for air.

Where scattered bodies

blackened and stiffened

are either curled-up in fetal position

or fused tightly together;

clinging to each other

in an undying gesture

of love.

This started off as a paean to the joys of a good fire on a cold winter night. But even then, there is always lurking in the back of my mind an awareness of chimney fires: the two-edged sword of playing with fire. Perhaps, though, it was having just finished reading about Russia's scorched earth war on Ukraine that really led me down the dark misanthropic path this poem ended up taking.

I think of Tokyo, Dresden, Grozny. Language and the abstract thought it permits is what distinguishes the human animal from the rest. Fire, as well. And this is what we do with our great gifts?