Embers’ new clothes
I
shivered
in the
dim light
and stooped
to open the
mouth of the
stove – the ash bed,
log-less after a long
night and seeing no sign
of light or heat, I grabbed
the poker and jabbed the
lifeless gray, as if trying vainly
to stab the dead. Then pseudo-
smoke, like a spirit, mushroomed and
brooded over, but laid bare, the tiny
coals looked like waking stars. I dug
and stirred and scraped – finding, unearthing
the orange nano-suns, heaping them into a tiny
unlit pyre. And, seeming cheered, the little mound
glowed and pulsed and warmed my fingers and I bowed
low and gently blew, resuscitating them, mouth-to-mouth, and
I fed the smoking heap with scraps of tinder too. And after two
sustained blows, the flames leapt up, without warning,
feeling free enough to dance, uninhibited
in their new-found bright clothes.
– David Herin