Nate Maxson
Those Who Favor Fire
—after Robert Frost
It’s an attempt to recreate light
I told you,
The flicked cigarette out the window
Ought to be enough of a common spark to prove my loyalty
I hold with those who favor fire
It’s neither scripture nor rocket science,
To make it as banal as I can:
I hold with those
Whose casual indifference to this limitation
Births a wildfire glowering in deadfall
I hold
The mechanism that crushes the mechanism
And the one beyond that
An endangered species
The expectation of a continuing increase in size
Between my hands, just between you and me
I’ll ask you one more time
What killed the dinosaurs?
A reiteration
A slow drizzle
Or the post-miraculous?
The fire
I hold
I hold
Nate Maxson is the author of Vaudeville Jihad (Slow Fever, 2011), I Wished For A Serpent (Mercury HeartLink, 2012), and The Age Of Jive (CreateSpace, 2014). His poems have appeared in Eunoia, Toe Good, Empty Mirror, and Cultural Weekly, among others. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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