Wrestling with Fire
Everyday is Ash Wednesday with her:
that smudge of sorrow on her brow.
A junkie for embers, she is, with
burn marks on her arms. So the chimney
is the smoke’s ladder and at its base
she wrestles, like a true oven Jacobin
pinning down the Angel of Heat. Fanning
flames with pages torn from combustion
theology, shepherding the logs with her
lambing hook made of ringing copper.
An alchemist , turning wood into bread
with the blessing of a spark, forging the
bellowed gospels into a baked piece
of heaven.