Seraphina Speaks

 

Seraphina Speaks

By: Courtney T. Beck

 

“Do not be afraid,” she says to me

on the heels of a kind of grief

some fires, this fire

blazes a trail to something new.

 

Would you follow these embers that

light up the dark?

Could you consider leaving

the safety of this house?

 

Here we go, yes, come with me

into the cool dark woods, here,

at the edge of familiar fields

 

Collect the kindling, stick to stick

find the heart of the wood past this

moss, these twigs, and those branches.

 

They lie vein-like, don’t you think?

Forgotten arteries, it seems

that danced in seasons past

to the rhythm of the oak.

 

Chop your own wood and

it will warm you twice, they say.

I say, chop the wood you find at the heart of the forest

and it will show you who you are.

 

Find the oak that lived long before you knew

of death and life and joy

and get to work

 

Put on your gloves and remove your jacket

Do what it takes with your ax and your grit

and become the oak that will warm you

 

And as chips and limbs fall in piles

to the damp earth at your feet

find your heart, bruised and vital

absorbed by a chopped oak house

 

whose walls and roof and floor and beams

will warm us;

our living, breathing bodies

until this fiery winter

gives way to the spring.