The man wandered through the melancholic woodland,

His blue-tinged skin as cold as his heart, his eyes tired and sad.

He had existed here solitarily for many a year now,

Meandering aimlessly as the wind does through the trees, a nomad.

The man came upon a shady copse with a blackened spot at its centre,

The charred ground resembled a cauterized wound, kissed by flame.

He pictured the warm glow that had lit up this glade once before.

And resolved to relight this fire, his sorrow, he hoped it would tame.

The man’s dry, calloused hands worked to gather drier kindling and wood.

The construction of the pyre began, the pile became steadily higher.

A funeral for his loneliness, he wished as he settled on the soft, mossy earth.

Warmth, light and hope; for a long time, these had been his greatest desire.

The man unpocketed a battered steel and flint, a hard tool it was to master.

Kneeling and feeling the chill in the air, he struck rock against metal desperately,

Watching with wonderment as a spark jumped eagerly into the tower of twigs.

He sheltered the small, smoking stack, and blew hot breath on it delicately.

The man nurtured the fire devotedly, and the fire reciprocated.

It’s heat fierce and impassioned; he held his hands up and leaned in to be warmed.

Unafraid of the intensity, unlike others before him who had extinguished its brilliance, had been.

The flames danced seductively, mesmerising him, and then, the glade was transformed.

The man lifted his eyes from the fire to the forest around him, mouth agape.

Shades of vivid green made visible, jades, olives, sages. The splendour of his world revealed,

By the light of the fire that he rebuilt and revived. In this beauty he lived happily,

For the remainder of his existence, in that copse, with his fire, concealed.

By Jordanne Kennaugh