We became experts at woodstoves
and fire, my brother and I
taking comfort in the warmth,
the smoking and heaving, the blue-orange
blaze of rings burning off
consequential years that the gnarled pine
had gathered over decades of surviving
gales and storms, and even the
early snow in ’84 which brought
limbs collapsing upon
the roof of Mom and Dad’s room
in October and put us out in the cold,
the one whose embers we stoked with an iron prod
to bring comfort that day
when the house shook us awake.
Shedding its flimsy branches,
still heavenward, it stood.
That tree from whose weakness we drew life
sacrificed its brokenness on that bitter day like today
when all’s not right with the world
but the light of the home fire.
~ Rae Carpenter
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Like the wood of the Cross, Rae
I cannot apologize sufficiently for what follows, but reading about your pyrotechnical education prompted my warped mind to remember another "truism" concerning fire.
"Build a fire for a man, and he will be warm for most of the day. But if you set fire to the man, he will be toasty for the rest of his life."
I''ll show myself out...