Bonfire

First, my boot heels sank.
Then the ground required more —
and I was lying in the damp field

passing around a silver flask
becoming light with whisky
but heavy beside the two men I loved.

A night of friends and their singing
to an October bonfire — by morning
it would appear just a blackened space,

this sending forth of countless sparks
and each impulsively alive, unashamed
to glow its panic

against the backdrop of sky.
Here the air carried my impossibilities,
sharp like the cold, thin but rich

with hickory smoke, the unsustainable
a surge when the logs shifted and cinders
flew, burning for everywhere

at once. The arc of red energy
while it lasted — all I would give
that shape in the field, so awake

to its pressure, the sinking denim,
cuff of flannel almost touching
the one I would not touch,

this drawing down, my impress
deepening — it would outlast me there,
this form I left in the field.

Copyright © 2004 Julie Funderburk All rights reserved
from 32 Poems
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission