Anger

At first glance into my fire I saw the wood was winning.

The yellow flames larked about the squatting log,

dignified and toadish, unfeeling, blacker than solace,

not at all like the guy who would be last to leave the party.

But fire seemed a thing wood tolerated, barely.

I was not famous. Soon my son would be able to say

the word famous. He could already say anger and he

wasn't even two. (Matter of fact, he said it all the time.)

He would be famous for saying anger so young,

and I'd be his old da, fire‑watcher, old mess‑in‑the‑head.

In 1862 alone Emily Dickinson wrote 366 poems.

In each one something of the sticky silk she cast

for 24 hours caught, and then you felt her eating her web

like a barn‑spider. She'd blow on the ink and sew the poem

into the year's packet, on top of yesterday, toss it in a drawer.

I'll bet in her whole life Dickinson never tossed a thing.

In her first poem that year, wearing the sod gown,

She rode out to meet her male friend, the End.

Useless feeling burning slowly inside out,

Fire rasping, new flames spread thin like a father,

no longer to stand in the maw of the hungry beast of self

and crack a joke about it, as now the flames laid low

suddenly red as if with my son's anger, picking their teeth,

stuffed with tree pieces under the grate, like fish spines

picked clean of what they thought they were about.

At least it solaces to know That there exists – a Gold –

her standard undecayed. But even gold burned

in my fire: the blazing brass fire‑dogs panted,

the rain sang in the burning dead branches

of the sugar maple, the rain sang for its life