GHAZAL (FIRE)
When the beloved is present, presence lights a burning fire.
When the beloved is absent, memory sparks a yearning fire.
Swirls of summer dresses. Delicate beauty catches the eye.
Be more cautious of her scorn than Cupid returning fire.
Lust is easier to manage than purified love, sometimes.
Saint Francis flung his tempted body into a churning fire.
An education in nature starts with the basic elements:
learning earth and air, learning water, learning fire.
A tattered manuscript covered in something not quite leather.
Scattered fragments of an archaic treatise concerning fire.
Driving home at midnight, staggered lights on the northern horizon:
a rare Aurora Borealis, a wall of upturning fire.
Between this world and all it holds and the floating world of illusion
lie nothing more than shadows cast by the mind’s discerning fire.
Whose vision of heaven do you want? What geometries?
The saints and angels circle, their paths an arc of turning fire.
And whose Hell is this? A space of silent loneliness.
Boredom much worse torture than tradition’s interning fire.
Face it, Stephen, the only fire in the belly you have is heartburn.
You should fall in love some time. Embrace the affirming fire.
—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
__________
Stephen Allen: “Experimenting with forms is always fun for me, a chance to bring some order into my life. Writing ghazals, in particular, has been very satisfying: the jumps between couplets mirror the way my mind works, and the traditional subject matter of lost love is one I find very sympathetic at this point in my life.”
