Fires
A punctuation-free autobiographical meditation on the many fires I have tended.
Dark cold wet March morning I get both fires going so soon the chill will be gone carrying in wood scooping out ashes stacking it in the stove just right a kind of puzzle so now it roars alive flames filling the spaces between the smaller then larger splits of ash cherry oak the art of building a fire one thing I am good at having made so many from the first fires in that big Ashley Automatic on Unquomonk hill in Williamsburg Massachusetts far above the tobacco fields and university towers of the valley to Griffin Ridge Road in Presque Isle Maine where wood heat was all we had one big inside room even devoted to holding dried split wood cord upon cord of it stacked outside behind the house alongside the fields where our dog would hunt wild strawberries far to our south on clear days Mount Katahdin like a cloud on the horizon then living in town yes there really is a Kalamazoo but no more real fires just the fake log gas fireplace we would huddle close to for any warmth as we’d do in power outages tossing blankets there and eating Chinese food from containers the dogs settling around us both for the heat and the hopes of fallen food as we’d later settle with our children around so many camp fires they’d poke with sticks swirling them like fireworks into the air that one time straddling a fire with an umbrella in a passing thunderstorm to keep it going so later we could sip wine from plastic cups children off to bed in nearby tents the fire hot on our faces the night cold against our backs guitars out beneath the stars the slow lapping of waves against shore now so much older so much behind me so many fires these arms have carried a small forest of cut split dried wood at our cabin last month the fire was even more essential alone at the edge of miles of nowhere and no one and the cold so much more present and dangerous it is good to face that primitive cold that primal need for warmth we too often forget the essentials now the heat from this fire finally reaching me from across the room seeping in through this old skin to these old bones heat cold being nothing everything becomes more existential as my own flame begins to falter that coldness bearing down but for now on this plane of the metaphor we are nearing spring my wood pile dwindling so we might just make it through already there have been days with no need for fires even when the air is cool the sun direct enough to warm us inside.
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