What matters most is how well you walk through the fire

What matters most is how well you walk through the fires
Charles Bukowski

Walking through fires and dark woods
In scorching heat and freezing cold
I got burned and scarred
I got blistered and numb.

Crossing burning deserts
Walking through wood fires of passion
The coolness of the forests lured me in.

I was a child lost
In a sombre maze of paths
In undergrowth and eerie sounds

Longing for warmth
I bedded wolves
And fed them my love.

Kissed toads
And touched wet surface
hiding the cold hearts of amphibians.

In icy streams of solitude
I bathed my wounds
And eased my pain.

When tired I hid in a cave
In hibernation
Pregnant with myself .

In my soul's dark hollows
I finally gave birth to me,
a midwife in labour pains.

Fathered by
The beasts and the burns
The fires and the forests.

Walking through fires and dark woods
In scorching heat and freezing cold
I must have done it well
Because I did not lose, but finally found myself.