More on: fire

How to do it, how hold
in balance

what misses the mark
and what hits it

I too half-curled, half-clutched
in bedclothes, writing the light full
then fitful as it ascends into cloud drift,
warm snarls of will among fluid states

The kettle begins to sing
the one note of its one song.
The day becomes itself beyond
the glass of the kitchen window.

You believe He’s stronger than the desert wind butting against the fence, wind that ignites sagebrush, tears through the hills and strips the houses to ash. Despite your lips that crack till blood comes, skin that grows rough between your fingers, you believe He will be solid to your touch the way the bay is…

1. MY LIFE HAS GOTTEN so unpleasant that I have to write it down. I’ve learned that nothing makes a bit of sense to me unless I write about it, like I’m getting old and can’t remember things or can’t see straight until it’s all spelled out in front of me. But that’s ridiculous; I’m…

Poxes of the sun or of the mind bring the force-ten firestorms. After come same-surname funerals, junked theory, praise of mateship. Love the gum forest, camp out in it but death hosts your living in it, brother. You need buried space and cellars have a convict fetor: only pubs kept them. Houses shook them off…

I know a woman who, when she hears wise words uttered, turns her palms upward. She’s as likely to place her hands on my shoulders, to comfort. None of it for show. Palms upward, she’s a basin. Palms downward, a wellspring, rain. May we be basin and well to each other. May we be rainlight…

A long time spent trying, kneeling, to light a votive for my mother from a votive for another. Each fire floats on shallow viscous water. With my stick, I wet wicks, extinguishing prayers instead of sending up mine: I loved you every day, will. My stick blackens, does not carry light. Evening bells ring. The…