Nine Fires
Time's not the prison that you think
I saw nine fires move in mystic dance. But I was tired. Texting. Texting you and too tired to mark those fires' dance. They must have swept the night sky like fox tails, crept in kingly color— a rose plume bloomed violet— while at my fingertips a solitary sentence sent in half-sleep's silence: Time's not the prison that you think. Time is the clipped and braided wick within an oil lamp’s orange glow— ever burning, ever low. Whatever man or beast beyond dim time’s light lies, it is the darkness that constrains your sight not the feeble flicker of the lamp. The timeless dark, oblivion, would turn eternity to naught except that time still pulses on. And in the distant misty dark nine fires burn as our lights sleep. Within the chariot of God, all light’s contained, all fires keep.




Great final lines here. “Within the chariot of God/
all light’s contained, all fires keep.”
Shades of Eliot here, Daniel. Really fine work, and the audio adds much to aid apprehension.