We’ll Build
by Tony Burfield
I’ll build a fire tonight
against the cold and against
technology and against the federal
reserve.
We’ll build a fire tonight,
crouching in flannel shirts
and Achilles boots,
fire in the brick box in the dry
wall box in the 2×4 box
in the wooden siding box.
We’ll build a fire
and breathe the pine smoke
and taste the grit and get splinters
from gently, delicately, pulling
thin, dry kindling off
logs.
We’ll build a fire tonight
and remember something deep
something not forgotten
but misremembered
and rusty, something embryonic
and more human than the keys
we type.
I’ll build a fire tonight,
and it will burn and smoke
and crack with snap,
with expanding resinous tree blood.
We’ll build a fire.
Tony Burfield lives with his wife in Boulder, CO and works at the public library. When not running wild in the hills or streets, he reads, writes, and saunters by the creek. His poetry collection “Canid” won the Green Fuse Press 2010 chapbook contest.