Fire

The Fire

We were disciples of fire, my brother and I,

the stump-burners.  Behind the barn, two

hollowed-out, head-high, live oak stumps

we chocked full of busted boards and soaked

with gasoline.  Striking our matches in sync,

we called down fire, watched the fulgent trunks

grow holy and blazing with heat.  Out wooden

chimneys, fire-tongues flicked into the sky,

proclaiming in pointed flames:  “I AM who

I AM, who I AM, who I AM.”  All afternoon,

we tended fire in mighty stumps—fed fire

through knot-holes in fire-walled stumps

till dark fell on the day of fire.  In crumbling

furnaces, we saw coals shimmer with three-

personed life–white, red, and black–then,

poking with a stick, sent showers of cinders

into the night, a fire-fall of cinders raining

on our faces like shining spirits falling in the fire-

stormed night.  From the other side of glowing,

I hear my cow-licked and fire-happy brother

say, “Make the fire come down!  Make

the fire come down!” and I think how we knew

one another in cinder-lit dark, our human faces

refined in the forge and fellowship of fire,

how all I learned flashed into form:  the young

brother I could not keep with smoking sword,

the beauty of ash on a child’s skin, the last coal

pulsing in testament against the widening night.

To a day of burning, to furnace-fire in hollowed

stumps, I trace the true knowing of my brother:

his best voice calling down fire—his pure, sweet,

and most lasting face shining in a circle of fire.