Burn

by Lee Sharkey

I placed my hands beside each other, one palm down, one up
I closed and opened them like wind turning pages,
as if I were the book I held when prophets railed and avarice
rampaged
like leaf fire dancing, all the shame, all the same, the many fire colors
forked.
I stood on the far side of the fire in the form of someone watching
trees exploding,
wedding rings melting, sheep’s fur sizzling to sparks tossed skyward.
The page kept turning, fireflies flashed in vanishing colonies.
My hands turned frantically. An onslaught of concerns battered
me:war’s dumbstruck children; sadness on the breakfast plate;
the long sorrow that sets into my loved one’s face
when he stares into the absence that claims him.
Then wind turned the page again. I remembered I remembered awe.
Now the fire was a painting: the many colors of my own house
burning,
the stripes, tightly woven, a coat of many colors
to wrap myself in, nights in the desert. The red winds moved
westward,
the blues moved through me to become a sky.