The fire crackles to life ...

The fire crackles to life,

paper-fed kindling, tee-pee’d,

dry wood taking hold and snapping,

an explosion of red-embers dying,

cooled in the chill of night-time

and darkness descending, a darkness lit by flames

carefully coaxed and resurrected,

turning black the hardwood chopped and split

I feed them now, hardwood rough and ragged

lightly laid there, one across the other

so’s not to crush out, extinguish

these flames ignited, heat and my spirits

rising in smoke and ash, sitting here as I am,

warmed by the solitary silence surrounding me,

a silence shared by the deep croak

of a bullfrog sounding, echoed by the lone

cry of a loon calling out and a chorus of peepers shrill

and unseen among the trees, the soft lapping

 

of the water on the shore my sole companion.