Memories of a Fire

As another log succumbs to the heat
Your outline illuminates into image.
A few long flickers dance in your eyes.
Slowly,
painfully,
Image fades to shadow,
To outline,
To smokey memory.

The perfect circle of glowing embers
Offers a warmth not needed,
But most welcomed.
We sit silent entranced by its rhythm.
Its movement, random and ever changing.
But we stare as if searching for some kind of pattern.
As if it were more true if it had one.

We stare not unlike into a tv,
but really not like it at all.
The tv offers escape.
This offers pause.
A mind haltering, frightening awareness.
An undistracted, unreserved conversation
between God and soul.

Our words are few.
They can offer little now.
Kierkegaard was right in that truth
Is in being, not knowing.
And as Chafer said,
I am in my being here with you.

We feed more logs to the smoldering heap.
As if placing fat on an alter.
Hoping its fragrance will please God,
so this moment of presence will not end.