Poetry by Alison Jones : Kindling

Kindling

Light as a bird bone, she settles herself around nested scraps, 
at dusk, she make paper caves, with curling pages of old news.
Stories seep, infinite, as though the whole swell of words

might engulf her, never to return. She begins in red, 
then a rainbow symphony, through quicksilver, the wholeness
of flames burns a path between the wood and the trees.

The flicker pulls you deeper, into the heartwood, 
like something you were always looking for, arriving,
out of darkness on a windswept evening. In her eyes, 

the past’s ashes, in her womb, fire stories, 
blessed the dancing earth, sacred, the words we pass between us,  
wild, these flames that leap up behind our eyes.

Lay down in the fire, unhook your yarn with spark and smoke, 
drift away, a glowing seed, exhaled to the forest, 
to the ancient places, where the trees are always themselves.