Flame

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Flame 

Drifting, she passes through the frame.

Reshapes borders, edges.

The way smoke scribes a letter in the sky with
gases and particulates. Intractable. Impermanent.

But not like a risen corpse
yet to accept its body’s stilling, or
the flooded creek’s waters taking
a house and the family within. Some things

are explainable. This morning you drained
the sink, and thunder set off a neighbor’s alarm.

From every moment, a second emerges.

Picture a man lighting a candle where a home once stood.

* * *

“Flame” is included in my chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for order via Amazon.com and Finishing Line Press.

26 thoughts on “Flame”

  3. I have been waiting for someone to use the word particulates… for selfish reasons. It is used in my poem, a little encouragement.
    “a little encouragement
    particulates through you
    like a reason to live…”
    Thus, have I been encouraged. Thanks!

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  4. So much of anyone’s life experience is “Intractable. Impermanent.” – memories certainly are not to be relied on, not reproducible. The context here of flame where once a house is powerful because houses DO wash away, and because it conveys impermanence of just about everything one might get attached to. A truly potent poem!

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  6. Along with impermanence, this poem speaks to me of the inevitability of disillusionment, which often embodies its own sort of awesome, even catastrophic beauty. Wonder in dashed hopes, in loss, in what vitality can and does rise out of the ashes, even alongside the ghost’s acceptance of its stilling corpse… This poem has always taken my breath away, but I’d never considered until this reading what it also gives… Brilliant!

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