My father as fire melts December snow
with each step he takes through a Pennsylvania field.
But there is no field there is no snow,
only a mud-rutted road where my father walks
as fire under a sky filled with molten geese,
which now know the horror of too much heat.
My father as fire sits in a flat-bottomed boat.
He poles across the water, looking down into it,
where he sees a glowing town a city & pillows,
on which ashes shape themselves into children’s faces,
& friends & former lovers & joyful leaps from remembered pets.
My father as fire believes in string theory & chaos,
convenience stores & muscle cars & the fly rod
abandoned to the cellar because fire & water no longer mix.
Some days the old rivers run through his eyes.
Some days his old eyes run through the rivers
like facets on a diamond like fangs on a snake,
like seven white horses drinking from a flaming trough.
My father as fire at seventy believes in the laying of hands,
an act which brings him both pleasure & pain,
the moment when the father sees the son
close his eyes & begin to burn.
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