Winter 2021: The Fire

A letter to Dear One

by Anonymous

Dear One,

Last night after the daylight faded, the moon shone, and the air was cold,
After a day’s worth of work and worry, I laid down in front of a fire.
Started with paper and twigs and followed by bigger and thicker logs,
The fire ablaze soon reached me with its heat and enveloped me in its warmth.

The lights dim and the long day waning, my weary thoughts turned to you.
I wondered what you might be doing thousands of miles away –
Though so far apart you felt close to me somehow, as if we’d been sitting there together,
As real and as close as our ancestors feel when I close my eyes and think of them, too,
Sitting around a fire.

We share the same blood, you and I, knit together by Love in the same womb.
We are the legacy of those who went before us: wild travelers, steadfast lovers, sweet caretakers, thoughtful scholars – joyful, anxious, lonely, beautiful, faithful people.
Though you like to deny it, we have the same eyes and nose.
Do you know how much you are loved?

As the fire grew, I watched a limb crack and collapse, destroyed by the flame from the inside out.
I thought of your pain, red-hot like the coals
And I thought of your waiting – for peace, for strength...When will beauty come from these ashes?
I sat with my own longing for this too; for the hope that has sometimes seemed dead.

We will someday return to the dust, you and I, like the ash beneath the fire.
We too will somehow nourish the ground and the sea and the sky –
Like all who came before us and will come after.

Watching the fire die down as the dusk turned to night and the flames receded,
I whispered a prayer that you’d know
That no matter how far away I might be I am here, Dear One,
Waiting with you by the fire.