#200 Kevin Brophy 'Burning the logs'

#200 ‘Burning the logs’

The fire began with a usual blaze and pop.

We sat around it.

We pushed logs further in

as talk pushed further

into the past.

We kept looking into it

as it demanded,

and it danced for us

even exploded a little for us.

In time, someone said,

each one of us

becomes an ancestor,

and we understand

this is a return to the present

as ash, as message, as reminder.

With diminishing pirouettes

and dying flourishes it threatened

to disappear

as we pulled our chairs in

our faces over its glow

our palms out in surrender to it.

Night a world at our backs

the past at last too vast

for anyone to find a thread,

someone found water,

the dark hissed in on us,

night was there all over the place again.