juniperphoenix

I'm reading a book on the cultural and literary history of the Phoenix myth. This morning it introduced me to this wonderful poem.


Revenant
by Joseph Hutchison
Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-18

Thin fire flickers in the nest of old news
and skeletal sticks in the grate’s cradle,
wrestling its own torpor as it strains
to lift the flue’s load of year-end cold.
You ponder how it dozed in the starter’s
flint, then sparked out, unfurling a plume
on the gas’s blue flowing silk. Look

how fiercely it struggles not to fail
at enlightenment! Now that a chance
has finally found it here in this hearth.
Your hearth … so you pour breath
into the stubborn core again and again,
breath the fire at first pecks at, but soon
rips apart and gobbles up in a whoosh

of fresh existence. The kindling catches
and, as always, intimations of renewal
flare in your eyes, glowing briefly
before being borne off on a blackish
updraft. You blink, and the glints spiral
into the dark … are, in fact, already gone,
scattering toward the unreachable stars.