Fundament of Place: Fire

Stove fire is a fundament of their place

and they treat it as it exists outside of prayer.

The equinox light has time; finshed

John's relations with hard-starved fields

cold and gray, damp and fallowed.

The new November moon in its place named

for John's radished hips, Sara's winsome plaits.

John spans the gatepost door and

slippers slump-tired from shaping line posts.

He smells like sap resin, old pine smoke

and damp wool. Sara fingers the salt

and shifts her weight to the stove door.

She has prayed all day as if to say

"I love him me some." Left foot walking

"Jesus." Right foot walking "Mercy."

He has worked at wordless things all day.

Blemish and rot has not yet defiled our land. 

Her cisterns are full of fresh water, the turn 

of the white hand is ready. She will satisfy herself

with honey from the comb, their marriage

bed is not far -- reaching into their table's grace.

Insides of slapped cinder wood, the coal-tipped poker,

the soft explosions and mushroom blooms

of resin layered saps and epigrammatic sparks. 

Sara smiles with plates of roasted

venison, loose floured hair, beaded

important breasts, leavened to be

the warp and weft of a busy examin.

What does it mean to love the

material at hand, the worthiness

unacknowledged except with kisses,

calming winds, and falling into grace,

and cold baptism of gifted meats,

The promises hidden and unhidden

in the yeasty meats of love, the

resting before the planting, the

stovewood prayers of expected joy.

Sara suppers the stove, and John drinks his 

tired dreams: "Can this damp wood fuel

maintain the heat to burn?"