Thursday Poem - Chains of Fire

Each dawn, kneeling before my hearth,

Placing stick, crossing stick

On dry eucalyptus bark

Now the larger boughs, the log

(With thanks to the tree for its life)

Touching the match, waiting for creeping flame.

I know myself linked by chains of fire

To every woman who has kept a hearth.

In the resinous smoke

I smell hut and castle and cave,

Mansion and hovel.

See in the shifting flame my mother

And grandmothers out over the world

Time through, back to the Paleolithic

In rock shelters where flint struck first sparks

(Sparks aeons later alive on my hearth)

I see mothers, grandmothers back to beginnings,

Huddled beside holes in the earth

of igloo, tipi, cabin,

Guarding the magic no other being has learned,

Awed, reverent, before the sacred fire

Sharing live coals with the tribe.

For no one owns or can own fire,

it lends itself.

Every hearth-keeper has known this.

Hearth-less, lighting one candle in the dark

We know it today.

Fire lends itself,

Serving our life

Serving fire.

At Winter solstice, kindling new fire

With sparks of the old

From black coals of the old,

Seeing them glow again,

Shuddering with the mystery,

We know the terror of rebirth.

Elsa Gidlow