Eric Ashford Poet Free verse

The Fire

Carry it gingerly to the backyard,
it is a nursling yet ancient,
as stiff as chard gristle, as soft as lead,
as hard as a gallstone.
Open your hand.
see how it glows coal black.

This is your inner work,
this amorphous bone eating fire,
it smolders now in your hand.
Somewhere in the night
it grew stubby moth wings,
spans singed by the suns shadow.

Carry it now to the respiring air,
see how it breathes;
its elongated lung heaving
inside a flickering sac 
of nebulous conception.

Hold the hand 
with its seared burden palm upward,
whisper to the raptors of wind and sky,
let ravening talons tear it apart,
the hand also
let it be torn to the glistening cartilage
until there is nothing but ash.

When these metaphors fly away 
as the baleful caws of crows,
when wraithy harbingers 
cool into waymarks
a poem shorn of your gravity
will come to you.

Now growl or grin, grind even ash
                        into newborn light.

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