AFTER THE FIRE

Lighting candles inside the blackened house;
first thoughts roared with jagged revelations;
slime of wet soot, on weeping rags of walls,
faced us; like an old tramp’s black, out-stretched hand
and his black hand was everywhere around.

Everywhere, I saw the rooms of my heart;
now dead rooms, where I’d nursed eternity.
Black slime of soot and soot flakes in the air
made a darkness that clung to skin and hair
and blackened the walls of lungs, heart and mind.

No innocent thing seemed safe from the soot;
ill illumination had blackened my books;
the toy box, that crashed from the burning attic,
was filled with melted, mutated plastic
soldiers and dolls like casualties of bombs.

And my room, that was the fire’s source,
was the most violated room of all;
eaten out, completely, by its black curse.
Like it, I spoke of emptiness;
theft of emotions, memories and thoughts.

The fire’s grinning, roaring bogeyman
that had so terrified me
had gone but left behind its blackened pit.
Now,February winds and rains welled through
dirty,huddled rags and remains of it.

Outside, the February sky turned red.
Perhaps it grew enflamed with sympathy.
Easter was moving close, when wine was shed.
With love, the blackened house, might be redeemed.