The Burnpile
As detailed as a Dutch still life:
backless chair; drawer relict of dresser;
alder logs cocked en tableau;
lank skeleton of couch, its strips
of damask flesh dangling,
steel bones flayed on a plate of gravel.
A struck match animates the scene:
drowsy, slow at first to burn, then – as if a hound
got wind of food – flame jumps, flares, shakes
its orange fur flicking through the wood.
It growls, it hisses, snaps – contained ferocity
as hunger wakens the firebeast to howl for more.
It threatens, always, to race off, to leap
into the brush, to hunt, voracious. Called
to heel, it snarls, but settles down to worry
on a chunk of cedar, licking, crunching;
it chews the log to tatters. When I feed it
wet wood that I've left molder in the yard
all spring, it whines; it doesn't like the slime
or fungus. I hoist a four by four beam
into its maw, an ox bone of a log,
thick and juicy; eight penny nails for marrow.
I add plywood scraps, which it devours –
contented cur, steaming, smelly as an
old rug (which I throw on, too.) Now as I
sketch its portrait, it sighs and shifts again
to still life with embers, blackened beam, burnt
nails, calcinated steel, and a patient hose coiled
on a plate of gravel.