HEART OF FIRE, HOUSE OF SMOKE
The heart of the spirit world
lives and churns and its wake
is a house of smoke rising
and billowing out of the ground
The walls of the house
are scrim for the pantomime
silhouette — folly, vanity, lust —
and a little box is lit
like a lantern at the heart
of the house of smoke. The box
flickers and wavers, stays lit,
is tended by my fox, fox
color of smoke, fox whose tiny
fine features belie
a boundaryless burst of tail. What
in the spirit world wants us
this badly? over and over to come
churning up from the ground?…
I carry the little box lantern
from place to place in the house;
It shows shapes that build
then dissolve in relenting
intentions. Smoke heaps
and gathers, then loses
resolve. I clean my whiskers,
lick my paws
hold the lantern, snap
my jaws. I want
what the spirit world wants:
another chance, another chance.
Mary Fitzpatrick’s poems have been featured in Mississippi Review, Agenda, Dos Passos Review, ASKEW, Georgetown Review, as well as in A Bird Black as the Sun (Green Poet Press) and Cancer Poetry Project 2 (Tasora Books). She holds a BA from UC Santa Cruz and an MFA from UMass Amherst. wordfitz@aol.com
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