-A reflective meditation on legacy and consequence, the poem explores how what we nurture or neglect today becomes the warmth or damage inherited by those who follow.
The fire is older
than language.
It begins
with friction.
A spark
no one fully owns.
At first
it is small.
Contained
between stones.
Hands gather
around it.
Warmth
without question.
Fire does not ask
what started it.
It consumes
what is given.
Wood.
Time.
Attention.
It can be tended.
Fed carefully.
Watched.
A steady flame
that keeps
the night
at a distance.
Or it can spread.
One unattended moment.
One careless spark.
Dry ground
waiting.
What warms
can also take.
We inherit
the fires of others.
Some still burning.
Some reduced
to ash.
We add to them
whether we notice
or not.
Around a good fire
people gather.
Stories pass
without ownership.
Light reaches faces
that would otherwise
remain unseen.
Around a bad fire
people scatter.
Smoke replaces
speech.
What was shared
becomes loss.
The difference
is rarely dramatic
at the start.
Every generation
decides
how it burns.
Not in speeches.
In habits.
In what is fed.
In what is left
unattended.
Ash remains
after everything else.
Gray record
of what was used
to keep something alive
or to let something
be lost.
The fire we leave behind
will outlast us.
Not as flame,
but as consequence.
Warmth carried forward.
Or damage
that must be repaired.
And in the quiet moment
before we step away,
there is still
this choice:
to tend it
with care,
or to leave
something burning
that no one
can easily
put out.