Fire

Michael Dennis Browne

You love a fire; you love to sit and watch
the little stars float up toward the larger,
you love how dark is torn a while
by something ragged you've begun
with paper twists, with scraps, with twigs,
how leaves are shaking all about you
and down the hill the owl is calling, calling.
You chatter, joke, wave sticks. Your eyes shine,
and it is summer still, on earth our home,
as always in that other land we dream of
with its fires, its children. You are twelve,
as I write this; you are ten (just); you are seven.