ON TENDING THE GREAT ANCESTRAL FIRES

ON TENDING THE GREAT ANCESTRAL FIRES

Here lies the residue

Of an old fire

Long gone

Dry—Ashes

Left to the whelms

Of raindrops to dampen

Into a useless mush—

Or for the wind to blow

Aimlessly to nowhere;

Wet and immobile

Or blowing dry in the wind,

Useless are cold ashes.

 

Here, scattered among the warm ashes,

Lay hot remnants of a once great fire

Gone untended—abandoned as.

Often, tenders of great fires are released

From their duties by the thirst of death;

Others are just scared away.

Be whichever it may, great fires

Cocoon themselves in charcoal hued embers.

Charcoal hued embers—steamers of raindrops

And lovers of rebirthing winds of ignition.

 

Come chilled children;

Movements are like unsettled ashes

Of social interchange; revolution,

Like volcanic embers of transformation.

Come cocooned children;

Let us gather and stoke volcanic embers

That we may metamorphose in the presence

Of the Great Fire spirit of our ancestors—

Least we devolve into the staled mush of ashes.