Fire Making

We have different approaches to fire making.

You clean out the grate thoroughly, sending soot and dust skyrocketing.

Then you bury the firelighters deep in a maze of sticks and logs and coal and briquettes. 

To locate and ignite them is a veritable Turing effort.

I try random at first and launch several Cupid’s arrows in the general direction,

in the hope of an off-chance encounter with flammable material.

Even long tapers, improvised from yesterday’s Newspaper, often meet 

the same fate, and fizzle out before they strike home.

I consider the physics of fire: the supply of oxygen; ambient temperatures;

the force of gravity; and convection-

essential components of the manifestation of uncontrolled combustion.

I curse you several times for making the task so darn tricky.

Finally, I launch another match or taper, hoping that it will catch the tail of the previous missile, not yet fully extinguished, and somehow make the quantum leap to 

full blaze. Sometimes that works. But sometimes I have to dismantle your pyre.

And start all over again.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2018