The Fire

The Darkened  sweet scented forest silhouette
Stands silent on the hillside beside the lonely campfire.
Actually, the fire is not so lonely
In this campground of many fires
Smelling of wood smoke in the twilight.

And yet, a campfire summons a strangeness
No matter the century or spot
on which the fire throws its flame
upward into black night sky.

Several faces circle the fire
feeling warmth and companionship
On this brisk Autumn night,
Sitting in their chairs, drinking their wine.

The night deepens and grows long of tooth
Ceasing idle chatter,
And quiet stillness permeates
As the campground goes silent.

Someone rises and throws more wood,
then pokes the fire administering to its needs
As if born to it like a mother to her child.
The circle brightens.

Satisfied, they sit back and drink their wine.
And begin staring into the fire
At the leaping, dancing flames,
Transfixed, lost in something.

Staring, staring...thinking, thinking what?
They know not, but feeling something.
One, startled at some emotion, quickly looks up
Out into the star-pierced void, and shudders.
Eternity.

They sit in their small circle around the fire
Within the greater circle of their civilization
surrounded by other civilizations,
Teetering on the back of past civilizations
Looking forward into the terrifying abyss.

Heads begin to throb, then faintly, from a distant place
Comes a muffled pounding, drumming,
Unknown, but somehow familiar rhythmic beating,
Just beyond perception and within them.

Now expanding, growing louder, wanton in essence,
Pulse quickening, anxiously calling, exuberant, yet fearful.
Grasping...pushing them inward, and backward,
Far back, penetrating the thin skin of modernity.


There was always the collective comfort of the fire.
Dancing flaming fingers moving up to meet eternity,
And the drums, beating , warding off
The horrid unknowable, unseen
In the dark, just beyond the fire.

The ancient fire was there in the frigid, snow laced winds
of the Northern forests;
Or along the twisting rivers under the canopy
Of vast jungles;
And out in the sun drenched savannah.

The flames start to die down
And they pull their chairs closer
to the fire...
For there is something still...beyond the fire.

By James Guy