Sitting lazy

Before the fire

We watch the yellow and blue flames,

The green and orange flames

Which are the tongues of tortured wood.

The fire is a spitting and crackling voice

That speaks proudly to someone 

Behind us, someone behind our 

Glazed, glass-weighted eyes.

We may sit entranced and comfortable,

Together with our lonliness, 

Sit silent and still in the evening.

                                            Many still

Faces the fire has known, many deep eyes

The flames. Fireside time with friends 

Portends a fullness in time, allows

For and adds something treasurable in time.

At such times, in the rank smell of

Log cabin walls and yesterday’s stale wine glass,

The earth might become a muscle;

The sea, blood;

The past, a skeletal erection;

The spirit, a new metaposcopy.

The diversions of antiquity are seemly

When seen in the timeless fire; 

All moments accomplish their ends as

The flames to the eye kiss sleep.

Not sleep as the sleep of dismissal,

Nor sleep which swallows weariness,

But the sleep of the waking retreating

To the fields of the flowers of mind.