Past events and gatherings

 Fire

by Judy Brown

 What makes a fire burn
 is space between the logs,
 a breathing space.
 Too much of a good thing,
 too many logs
 packed in too tight
 can douse the flames
 almost as surely
 as a pail of water would.

 So building fires
 requires attention
 to the spaces in between,
 as much as to the wood.

 When we are able to build
 open spaces
 in the same way
 we have learned
 to pile on the logs,
 then we can come to see how
 it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
 together, that make fire possible.

 We only need to lay a log
 lightly from time to time.
 A fire
 grows
 simply because the space is there,
 with openings
 in which the flame
 that knows just how it wants to burn
 can find its way.