Modern Soliloquies & Pastiches

Thirty billion light years from my finger tips the galaxies burn with white hot light —

I live in fire.

You fiery furnace — universal kiln,

I know your heat, warmth, singe, arc, burn.

I’ve seen your luminaries — glowing in my telescopes.

I know your lightening flashes on Jupiter.

Your volcanoes blowing up on IO.

And here too — your vibrating atoms, your everyday blue brightness and the noctiluca scintillans glowing in my own ocean.

But our fires — the ones we hunch down dark over, fumble, fidget, fume, kindle — they are differently dangerous.

We go home, click on our bulbs and run our thermostats to high.

We go out, shining small flashlights.

We devour the Lascaux.

We crave the light and spread low fire upon the earth.

We torch the Amazon.

We burn inside with a fierce, fickle, final anger,

We rain fire upon each other —

All our fires go out quickly.

And so it comes to this — you hold our hands after we have burned them,

Sooth and salve our blackened skin,

And hug us,

You sit beside us when we cry.

And with you near, we warm again from the inside out.

Together we flash, flame, flume, flare, scintillate, shimmer, sparkle and shine.

You will never go out.

Praise you.