What I really want to write about is bonfires.

The kind you build on the beach, water a stone’s throw away.

I’ll pretend it has a life of its own.  Perhaps it does, who knows.

It’ll remind me, gently, of what I don’t know.  By looking

 

deeply drunk into its flames, I might come to the conclusion

that the moths were right – the fire is all there is, that life

is all about warmth and only about warmth, that the flight to

the light is the only way to go.  Maybe that is why we

 

light candles for our dead.  We like to think they have gone

but a little way down the road and will surely return.

 

(c) Ella Wagemakers, 22.45 Dutch time (= 16.45 EST in the US)