My Grandad's Fire

My Grandad taught me how to start a fire

A line a telling a tale a tiding

Stories built upon the burning wooden words of truth

bundle-bound to warm and light the room

As a boy I saw him shining up on stage

Breathing the flame he made with every turning page

There he melted me like metal down

And cast me in a mirrored mould of him

ready to dance and howl the words of Prometheus’s flame

Oh how we burned in our mind’s

Fiery light and golden gilded halls

Adding our lights to the ever winding flow of words and history

No one heard us speak but he

Too soon learned the cost of flying nearby the sun

Roaring burning raging flames burn bright but never last

I saw my Grandad just the other day

hunched over low with shoulders stooped

The bonfire behind his eyes burned down

To the guttering flutters of scarlet glowing embers

His white hair was the ash that surrounds a shrunken fire

And on his lips only a pale fleeting memory of the flame

As I spoke I watched him gather up himself

And try to spark a tale the way he once could do

But for the first time he got the story all mixed up

And found the only burning was in his reddened cheeks

I just did my best to smile

and help him pretend that he still burned the same

Well all fires go out and we buried my grandad

In soil soaked from morning rain

Cloying red clay stuck to my shoes while I carried his coffin

Where we put him there's no one to hear

the burning crackle of his stories told

Or remember his flame that tempered me

Oh that sole and bright and blinding guiding light

On that day a golden glow shone up in clouds above

Cast red by shine of dead and setting sun

I hoped some part of Grandad burns on up there

Watching as I fly and shine and write and talk

Along the course he taught

I know at least his light is burning safely in my memory

Just as it burns on in me