The Burn Barrel

Hell hot and glowing,

Crackling, wavering orange through rust-eaten gaps,

In the tottering burn barrel.

The barrel eats my wood scraps,

Spongy old screen doors,

Smashed to shards and fed in,

Flames snapping and dissolving boards.

The heat stabs my hand with a shock,

As I toss in scraps,

As the barrel wobbles,

As a storm of its own heat,

Threatens to spill out and spread,

Burned ends dropping off,

Smoking on the ground ready to make the world,

Into an orange hell.

The poor cedar next to it is singed purple on its branches,

Where heat flared trying to ignite it like a match,

The hunger of its devouring stoked by more wood,

And me, its keeper, trying to moderate it one stick at a time.

I should have used a new barrel,

Not this old rusty thing,

But this is one we use, one we always have,

This is how we do it, father and grandfather,

And this barrel,

Needing its power but fearing it,

More and hotter and wider and everywhere,

Until all the wood is eaten along with us,

And the rain comes and the gray ash is cool as clay.