The Many Faces of Fire

The woman looks into the fire

Eyes on the marginal coals

At the edges and imagines

A slow-burning lover, neither

Hot nor cold, just warm

And smoky and languorous.

The man stares dead ahead

At the center of a white-hot flame

And imagines quick-silver in his veins

Then high-altitude labor, felling

Trees by the hundred-weight, kindling

That will burn hot, die, and call again.

Later he dreams of a Hemingway lunge

The matador’s single sword thrust

The “estocada” driven home.

In another theater she dreams

Of steady sinuous movement, whispering

“I must go on, I can’t go on, I must go on”

Wary of the phosphorous burn

And the threat of light without heat.