Her birth was obscure.
She came to life on a back road in the high country,  
A shining speck,
No larger than a flake of pepper,
She was spawned by an iron shaft
Drawn over the road by a rambling farm truck
Amid a volley of sparks, she and her sisters flew out to the roadside,
To settle in the dirt and die for lack of kindle.
But this radiant crumb was gusted by a heft of wind
That carried her into the long, yellowed grass
Of a roadside ditch.

There, the little shine,
Still in heat,
Buried herself in the desiccated duff
Of the wayside,
Surrounded by the dry summer heat
Of late afternoon.

Yes,
I came into being
A tiny mote
Of rapacious hunger.
                       
To eat, to consume,
To suck all the vigor                                      
From vital substance
And reduce it
Into spent ash.
This I demand!
Lest I fail
To exist.

I need you to know that,
That diminutive speck of heat is me.
I live on the edge of death,
Any neglect,
Any stifle, can be my end.

Aha, but I did not die. I owe my life
To a slender shaft of straw, slighter
Than a hummingbird feather.

This morsel of food, which I instantly
Flung myself upon and voraciously devoured
Became my life.

A speck of straw
Devoured by a
Speck of flame.

By evening, I am inside a tiny hollow shaft,
Feeding on what I can, a twist of smoke rises
To tell me I am still alive.
Occasional spears of stubble
Lie about in tight proximity,
And I feed on them too.
And so I grow more secure
That I might outlast the night.

Now the wind,
My beloved brother gusts,
Providing me with requisite oxygen,
And a push.

But evening is near
And the cool touch of it chills me down
To a wretched, fluttering glow.
Still I endure, determined as I am
To survive until tomorrow.

That day arrives
With the promise of warmth.
And I shine,
With the admonishment
That my life can yet be stilled
By a drop of dew.

My mother is the waterless tinderland.
My father is the copious heat.
My dear parents and windy brother
Is my family always presiding near
To give needed assurance.

And I,
The infant spark, has come forward
For breakfast.

With my family, I greet the sunrise,
For I have flowered into a proper roadside burn.

The field of last summer’s
Brittle grasses
Spreads out before me,
A waiting feast,
Deliciously prepared.

To complement the offering,  
My brother stirs a modest morning breeze  across the pasture,
Which throws up a perfume that is irresistible to me.

In minutes, I grow
To a tractable blaze,
And quickly cover the valley drift,
Consuming the field
Of tassel and shaft.

My body now becomes plump, and hot.
I exhale great billows of black smoke            
As I tower over the countryside,
Raining white ash
On the darkening  landscape.

Please take note
Of how fast I grow,
And how fast I travel.
For you see, I no longer am the diminutive crumb
Of my childhood.
But this is only a field of straw
Please understand that
I need a more hearty breakfast
To satisfy my enormous potential.

Where are you my dear mother?

I now view the proud pine
And cedar forest,
Rising on the
Hot hills beyond.
Formidable magnificent trees they are.
So dry they stand, awaiting my visit.
My increasing girth and heat
Demands this worthy nutrient.
Thank you father,
Thank you mother.

While my feet still rummage
And smolder in the undergrowth,
My thickening torso
Leaps up the rough trunk
Of an ancient cedar tree.

I am a power now,
And I wish
The world about me
To perceive my
Growing presence.

Oh yes! There they are,
I have been discovered.
I see them coming for me
With their machinery.
I relish this encounter.

Here I am!

Find me up the hill.
Watch me spread.
Am I not impressive?

Catch me if you can!

The mountainside, crisp and dry, stretches out my soul.
My toes are white hot,
In a cauldron of fiery bramble,
And my head is crowning the treetops.

I am ready
To blossom,
To unfold,
To broadcast,
To disperse.

See, I grow immensely!
I am eating the hill.
I leap the cliff.
I plunge into the canyon.
I stand on the ridge.
Brother wind is at my back.

I swallow whole,
Mountains and pastures.
I am a magnificent presence,
Feeding on everything
I touch and stir.

They are above me now,
In the skies with
Hapless buckets
Of water
Tinkling down.

A little showerbath
Fleetingly wets my shoulders.
But it soon sizzles away
In my superheated
Landscape.

But see,
I no longer need my brother,
The wind.
For I build for myself
An ovenwind
From my own flesh,
For I have become the weather.
Watch while I toss up
Great shafts of flame,
Spiraling into the firmament
With tornadoes of fire,
Leaping behind.

Yes,
Look at me, Mamma!
See me Dad!
It’s all me.

And see,
I have found
A place of
Human tenancy,
I will visit there.

They live in structures of
Dried, and stacked,
Assembled, and joined,
Delicious, and delightful,
Kindlewood.

And see here,
They must have been
Expecting me.
They have prepared for me
An admirable meal.

In one breath I engulf,
And devour,
The little morsel.
And it is gone before the front door
Can open.

I am ready now
To send out
My children.
They will cling
To glowing bits of cloth,
And firebrand twigs.

They will go out traveling,
A long way from mother.
Little specs of blistering potential,
Riding high on her
Hot breath.

After their travels
Are finished,
They will scatter to earth
Plunging into piles of
Dry leaves.

The little rascals!

Do you remember,
I started in a patch of wayside refuse?
Then moved into fields of hay, and then to forests.
But now I have become  
Immeasurably more sophisticated.

For you see,
My banquet will be
These delicious little structures
Amassed side by side.

I admit to a love for those
Marvelously assembled accumulations
Of milled, and fitted, rectangles,
They call dwellings,
Standing tight
Wall to wall in properly aligned rows.

And see,
I no longer trot on the ground
From place to place.
Watch me.
For now I know how to fly,
 
Over fields and towns
With my children,
To pick and choose
Our next fete.
How brilliant I have become!
How graceful I am.

Yes,

They will call me
The most resplendent
Of them all.
And they will give me a name to talk about,

For years to come.

I burn machinery, and iron.
I melt metal, and make glass run in rivers.
I reduce trenchant church steeples to ash,
Lying on the black earth,
Like ethereal cobwebs.

On this,
The twentieth day
Of my existence,
There are many
People running about my feet.

To my amusement.

They nip at my toes,
And snip at my ankles,
Trying this and that
In futile efforts
To cut me down.

I dream of living
In perpetuity.
For I am sublime.
You see, they know I am
Impossible to capture
And contain.

But wait!

See here! What is this?
I have just now
Discovered an existential  horror!

What is happening?
What is transforming?
Right here in my own dominion.
Right here next to my flesh,

Is a frightful revelation.

For deep down in my torrid heart,
I must reckon with those  fears
That my day in the sun will have an end.

A wildfire does not easily forget,
Those times of innocent beginnings.  

On this day, at my zenith,
I have discovered a vast deficiency  
My fate has suddenly shifted.
I see, to my astonishment, that I have consumed
Everything within my horizon.
My greatest fear has come to be.
Nothing is left for me to eat!

I shall soon starve,

For you see,
They have not lived up to my brilliance,
For I demand more than they have to give.

I look about me
And all I see is great hills of sullen rubble,
With its life juices sucked away.
Such an ugly landscape I must now abide.

I will be supping tonight
On deathly grey matter.

On my twenty-sixth day
I see my children grow thin and wan
With ashen faces.
They will die before
Dawn.

And yet, I see more!
I must look more carefully
What happens?
I fear that the eccentricities
Of the atmosphere
has also turned on me.

For above my smoky blanket,
Beyond my haze,
The sky has darkened,
With tight and heavy clouds of rain.

The night closes in.
My body shrivels and withers.
Only bits and pieces of me remain.
I still burn, there on a front porch,
And there, under that iron bedstead,
Little pains of death.
In a thousand backyards,
In a broken couch I smolder,
By the schoolhouse toilet
I die.

And here, my last encampment is at the bottom
Of a deep ravine.
The rain has turned my
Dust and ash to dingy mud.
There is nothing left for me to eat.

I am so cold.

I huddle inside a damp cinder.
Little rivulets of rain run past my sides.
Once again, I have become a bantam spark,
Deep inside this cold black stump,
And here I will die.
And yet, and yet, I know they will never
Forget me

Yes,
She died
In obscurity,
In a back canyon,
In the high country.
 
No more than a
Slight warmth in the falling rain.
Quietly, the waters trickled down,
To drip on this mote of heat,
And wet her with a tiny hiss.