Tuesday Poem: Jump In The Fire

Toss it all in. The smoke






thick, greasy, the cinders

cuffed this way and that

by a turbulent breeze.




Hide your eyes. Retreat

until the wind backs off.

Seize handfuls, volumes. Let fire ants

devour the close-furled leaves.




There's something — you feel it —

of the night, of the lupine

act, unclawed, unfurred,

of living through another day.




Something of triumph. You dart

back, and then back to the flame.  











Credit note: "Jump In The Fire" was first published in my third poetry collection, Men Briefly Explained.








Tim says: I guess this poem has its origins in the garden waste fires Dad used to build when I was young, fires with a flammable core surrounded by turf that were designed to burn at a low heat for a long time so that we could load on more grass, branches etc as we worked on our large and unruly garden - this was when we lived in Otatara, south of Invercargill, in the late 1960s. Somewhere along the way, a sport of book-burning seems to have attached itself to the concept.








The Tuesday Poem: Is going to wait till the midnight hour. 

You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.