A Fire For Warmth

A few hot-orange embers burn low in the fire pit. Morning has sprung, evident only In the vague concrete illumination of an overcast sky. Scattered twigs and last night's remaining logs Are tossed upon the coals, With a few shivering breathes of dank October air to give life to flames. Frost has not yet bitten the landscape; But the huddled mass of human leans in, over the kindled fire For all of its warmth. The Night's drizzled humidity hiss-boils and streams from the wood grain of a saturated log, As the twigs roast and burn. The starving artist stands firm In the path of smoke, visible clues To the heats current passage. One could inadvertently burn on the simplest furnace, Steam rising from sweatshirt and pant leg, And the moist palm of the hand. Love, or so it seemed to the dreamer by his fire, Is like this. A kiss of life Given openly to the heart's flame, Fanning the hot embers of friendship and affection. Once stoked, a glance of chance Or a lover's touch Warms the body and sacred soul Against the icy depravity of an outside world. And though the cold is most apparent In the smokey moisture of one's own breath Hanging in the still air away from the hearth, The sweet melting passion is best experienced and not explained or seen. If the world were any colder The October sky would crack and precipitate, splintered and crystallized, To wipe the canvas clear below And give substance to a feeling of betrayal That keeps the lover embracing a modest fire, Whose warmth forsakes all else. A dented tin coffee pot percolates Sustenance into the day's beginning. Outside the ring of charred-crackling logs, The world rises up with the gyre of smoke And is lost to the stone gray sky. But the fire burns on, And the hungry heart lays nourished Within a dreamer's chest.