When I Discovered Sacrifice by Fire

There are so many waysof burning things, butnot many of containingthe flames they becomethat last. Our burn barrel,

replaced just often enough,would hold a year's worthof fire, or not much more,before flaking away, notas ash, but as steel veiled

with so much heat, for solong, it looked like bark,but rust-dark, with crackslike rivers in a magicmap running while dry,

leaking rapids of ash thatwere never, in my memory,actual black or white, butsome frustration of graywhere my never-settling

eyes, with no memoryguiding them, could notrecover what was burnt,what junk mail brochure,what bouquet of paper

towels, what white webof plumage plucked fromchickens in the minutesafter slaughter. Was myone find in that starburst

of bare dirt, ash-blanchedaround the barrel's husk,my knife that I had lost andgiven up on, easily, outof a sacrificial spirit that

said "no" to what I loved,too molded by fire by thento open again, into a thinlittle finger, Swiss crossrun up, by fire, as haze

in the smoke that so manymemories rode towarda fear-conjured, mad Godwho never seemed soclose to me as when Dad

pitched a match in, andfire climbed faster thanwe could manufacture,no faster than it hadfor our ancestors, and

any sins got flushed fromthe same ash that anyoneburning anything, anywherecould see, sins gone likemine might be in Him

who might one day leavenothing of me. Maybeit was a flame form of faith,ragged but dogged, brightas it was short, that kept

me from reaching in evenwhen it held no heat, ourburning barrel, even whenall I could find would besomething to wash away.