fire's place

consume

I see in these split logs

creased stories of trees,

their potted histories,

what time has packed

into each grain. How quickly

the wood burns

with an organised sound of toil,

working at the fuel

with a consumer's urgency and greed.

Finally this fire

will use up whatever 'pay-shuns

and per-severance,'

(as my Irish great-grandmother

would say) it has left

to conjure the heat

needed to warm my knees

and that area there,

where so much of the day

shores up, there,

right in between

my shoulder blades.

Kay McKenzie Cooke