Karen's poem: Fire (This poem was written for and about Daniel and Cherie- their story is below)

Fire

My friend lost her home to the fire. 

There she was, stooped over, 

hand sifting through foot deep

ash where home once was, ghostly

smoke spires rising up among bits

of charred, twisted metal, grandma’s

antique sewing machine tipped and

contorted, jutting up from the ashes

like burnt metal bones.

She had hoped to find something,

anything belonging to her late son.

But fire, sharp-toothed and gluttonous,

has an unsatiable appetite for memory. 

She stared into the deep well

of loss and wept. 

Nothing is sacred to fire.

It is all mouth, hungry and 

devouring. It is all legs,

leaping up and over and under.

Fire; the wind’s dark lover.

My friend lost his home to the fire.

He looked for the urn, hand

sweeping gently as a feather,

searching for a broken piece of 

ceramic or a soft shadow of

light that might delineate

beloved ashes from all the rest. 

He had hoped to find her, to lift

her up and out of the sorrowful

landscape of gray into the protective

cradle of his hand, but found, in the

crucible of fire, all ashes look the same.

Nothing is sacred to fire.

It is all mouth, hungry and 

devouring. It is all legs,

leaping up and over and under.

Fire; the wind’s dark lover.

My friends lost their homes to fire. 

Karen 

Copyright September 2020