Francis Fernandes
Fire
You came in
out of the crisp morning,
still aglow from your run,
dressed in your stretch pants
and a cap that hid your hair.
Your gravity and brisk air,
à la Joan of Arc, infected me
with that special longing
for an overarching truth.
I grasped at your garments,
tore them from your acquiescent
frame, while you whispered
something in your own agnostic
tongue which I barely understood
and which, frankly, could have come
from anywhere. You sank deeper
into my arms. The walls shook
and the sheets crackled like sparks,
the bed blossomed orange,
wild blue spears leapt from your soul.
But things took a turn when I saw
shiny-domed monks setting themselves aflame,
beheld race car drivers maimed and scarred
for life, witnessed doomed airliners
leaving nothing but charred remains
for the families of the deceased.
Having gone that way, I knew right
then and there that we are all afflicted
with visions, or words, not just you
my nubile pyro saint. In fact,
we are visions and words – some of us
burning brighter and louder than others –
and it came to me that, in the end,
after the days have shortened
and the sun has disappeared,
with the plain bones of winter
exposing that other singed and haggard
world, then our ashes will rise
through the low-hanging mist
and fly off in the wind, carbon seeds
unknowingly dispersed over the porous skin
of the Earth, with no purpose whatsoever
except maybe to call forth
some sleeping Lazarus from silent darkness
into the splendors of a new morning.
—Submitted on 02/02/2021
Francis Fernandes grew up in the US and Canada. His work has appeared in The Zodiac Review, Amethyst Review, Third Wednesday, Montréal Writes, Underwood, and other journals. Fernandes lives in Frankfurt, where he works as a teacher.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
