Fiery Connection

I found this gorgeous poem by Adrienne Rich at Poem Hunter. To me it stands as an alternative to the Clifton poem "fury,"in which a mother is forced to sacrifice her poetry to the red hot coals of a furnace. In Rich's "Burning Oneself Out," the speaker experiences a powerful connection with the burning logs in her wood stove, and describes the power of the senses to make us feel pulled out of time and joined with the thing we are observing. It is a transient but true experience.

Have a fabulous weekend.


Burning Oneself Out
 

We can look into the stove tonight
as into a mirror, yes,

the serrated log, the yellow-blue gaseous core

the crimson-flittered grey ash, yes.
I know inside my eyelids
and underneath my skin

Time takes hold of us like a draft
upward, drawing at the heats
in the belly, in the brain

You told me of setting your hand
into the print of a long-dead Indian
and for a moment, I knew that hand,

that print, that rock,
the sun producing powerful dreams
A word can do this

or, as tonight, the mirror of the fire
of my mind, burning as if it could go on
burning itself, burning down

feeding on everything
till there is nothing in life
that has not fed that fire

Adrienne Rich