4-10-13

I’m sitting on a hill behind the house watching the bonfire burn in the hollow below, listening to the crickets in the tall grass at one end of the yard and the frogs in their pond at the other. The birds have gone to sleep. The broken down trailer house and decrepit camper van next to its pile of old tires. The burned out shed just beyond the light of the fire, alive with shadows. Two black cats with white boots dart about looking for prey. In the week I’ve been here spring has come. The trees have some buds and a stand of them along the property line has acquired an explosion of white blossoms that drift about like snowflakes when the wind blows. The contents of the fire, a misspent life. A german shepherd wanders across the yard and stops in front of me. We are on eye level. He looks at me. I look at him. We don’t say anything. Then, based on some criteria of which I am unaware, he decides that I am a friend and runs happy laps around me, stopping to lick my face. Then he lays down next to me, insinuating his head under my hand for proper ear scratching, and settles down to watch the fire with me. I wonder who he belongs to. As I watch the flames I ponder the nature of fire. The flames and their coals smoldering below. The fires of passion. According to Yi-Fu Tuan in Space and Place, we are born with a fear of falling, but fear of fire has to be learned. The hard way…Fear of falling into the fire? The flames are eye-catching, they look flashy and dangerous, but it’s the coals you have to look out for, waiting to catch you unaware. I am afraid that I am playing with fire–coals–the smoldering remains of a teenage passion I believed long dead. But I can’t help but admire the way he reaches in, unafraid, to stoke the dying flames higher, nonchalantly shaking off the sparks landing on his arms and chest. My shadow from the top of the hill looms larger than life, a Titan. There were two of us, but now I am alone, my own Atlas. The earth supporting me even as I carry it on my shoulders. My white skin glows orange in the night.