My Fire

In the cave under our house I tended the fire: a furnace Where black fossils of ferns And swamp-shaking dinosaurs Would burn through the cold mornings If I shook the dying and dead Ashes down through the grate And, with firetongs, hauled out clinkers Like the vertebrae of monsters. I made my magic there, Not the bloody charms of hunters, Not shamans or animals Painted on damp walls, But something from fire. My father Tended huge rows of fires And burned with them all day, Sometimes all evening, all night In a steelmill, brought fire home On his face and his burnt skin And slept, glowing dark red. My fire made steam in coils And pipes and radiators Poured from the steel he made Somewhere I'd only seen Far off, the burning mountains Where God kept His true flame To Himself, melting and turning Blood-colored ore to pigs And men to something stranger. My spirit would swell and sing Inside those pipes, would knock And rattle to be let out, Would circle through walls and floors, Turn back to water and fall To the fire again, turn white, Rise hissing in every room Against the windows to grow Fronds and bone-white flowers, All ice in a frozen garden.