Three

Pyre

Three burning bonfires blowing
    smoke up straight, almost invisible,
as we pass by fast on the train.

I search hard for the people
    who started those fires.
Look for the bottles of gas,

kerosene, lighter fluid—there is
    nothing. Where is Dido, isn’t she
the one who burns on such huge,

quiet, flames?  There are no
    people, only emptiness. The train
rushes past so many piles of lumber,

dark with age and the wetness that turns
    trees almost black, unburnable
in my woodstove. But those three

piles burn and no others.  Vandals,
    workmen doing their jobs?
There is fire in Brattleboro,

on the outskirts, some nameless,
    dirty lumber mill.  The silence
inside the train blocks out

the birds, or maybe they have fled,
    terrified of the smoke, as I would
be, if I walked along the tracks

searching for bent pennies or stray,
    rusty nail spikes to give to my brother.
And I would half-expect

to find Dido among the ruined
    wood, burned alive for some man
that loved her but couldn’t stay.

The flames rise with no purpose or intent,
    wasting a warmth that could be given
freely to so many hungry, cold

hobos or wanderers in the night.
    And I smile inside as I imagine
the train whistling by hundreds

of tiny camps surrounded
    by so many travelers and strangers
no longer cold.

I wrote this in 2006, revised it in 2007 and again try to give it new life. This piece always comes back to me when I'm in this mood: slightly grumpy, verging on sad but for no discernable reason. I think I'd like to just be alone for awhile, be in the quiet until this headache is gone and then play my cello--which hasn't been touched since August--forget anything associated with work, friends, family, just be dead as far as the outside world is concerned. This morning I woke up at 7:30 despite the fact that I'd gone to bed at 3am...maybe I'm just tired.