First you take one rounded stone.
Beside it you place one more
and another until they make a circle.
This is your chimney.
Scouring for dead branches
your hands black with decayed bark
you snap twigs for kindling
leverage a branch on a dusty
rock and step on—its crack
rings through the woods.
Flames are spirits. They grow
with the aroma of smoke
as it bends and rises. Their glow
lights the forest’s underside.
Your fire occupies space and time.
Warm inside your bag, you imagine
this scene through the eyes of a Celtic
ancestor. Your spirit feels
at home as you gaze after sparks
disappearing upward into darkness.
Martin Dickinson was born in Pittsburgh and spent his childhood in Pennsylvania and southeastern Massachusetts. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Wisconsin and over his thirty-year career has worked in the labor movement (through 1989) for nonprofit groups and as an environmentalist. His recent work appears in Potomac Review, Clamshell Broadsides, and the Federal Poet. He has read Emily Dickinson at the Library of Congress for the Favorite Poem Project and led poetry events commemorating William Stafford. He lives and works in Washington, D.C.
