An Open Fire

I miss an open fire. Warmth, these days, is breathed out of the thin lips of a plastic vent commanded by a button. There is nowhere now where I can sit and stare into the depths of a dancing flame, enter that sacred space where thoughts and mystery meet and reconnects something in me to its earliest roots. I miss how an open fire centres life around its glow, how it works to draw us in, gathers us to share in its living warmth. I miss how it fills in the silence with its sounds, the crackle, the whispering hiss, the sudden bump of a falling log. I miss poking and prodding the charcoal remains, breaking them apart and seeing embers ignite into a bright spill of flame. I miss the smell of burning wood, the incense that first sanctified our ancestors humble homes and awakened a wonder that set us off on our human quest. I get it that an open fire is now not an environmentally friendly choice but a polluting relic of the past. I know the romance of it no longer thrives. It's rather like old religion, better gone, but it leaves a hole in our lives.