Poem: "Each Man's Chimney"
This poem came out of the March 5, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by Anthony Barrette.
Each Man's Chimney
Each man's chimney
is the pipe through which
his days flow, the soft slow breath
in and out, light and twilight,
smoke rising into the sky.
He comes into his house
and goes out of his house,
each day, as the fire
is lit and extinguished
and lit again.
In a little house
there stands a hearth
and wrapped around it a mantel
carved from fine wood;
and inscribed on the mantel
is a line from a poem
that was old before
the house was ever built
from trees that were old
before the poem was written.
Once there was a boy
who sat by such a hearth,
a boy grown into a man
as it is the way of boys to do.
One day there will be
another boy, another hearth,
other days and nights and fires,
growing and aging with the world's turning
as it is the way of the world to do.
When this poem has grown old
as the trees that burn in tonight's hearth
were old before they were harvested
for the sun's heat remembered in their wood,
there will still be words
read out by the flickering light of the fire
around some other hearth.
It was the first thing that men discovered,
the discovery that made them men:
the fire, the hearth, the crackle of words
binding time like twine around an armload of logs.
In the hearth of memory,
the coals of the past glimmer still.
In the forest of the future,
tomorrow is a flame waiting to be kindled.
* * *
The original prompt featured the line "Each man's chimney is his Golden Milestone" carved on a mantelpiece. It comes from the poem "The Golden Milestone."