MARIE HOWE

(complete poem)

Last night I lay on the floor of my friend’s living room
and watched the burning cinders sift from the grate to the floor of the fireplace.

How good it was to look into the indifferent element.
What is fire, my friend said. Is it the log? Is it something distinct from the log?

Is it the log consuming itself? We lay there, adding one log after another until
the fire was ash.

My soul drank enough to know how thirsty it was.
This morning, the sunlight falling to the far corner of the bed, I remember

the dream of the forked stick—the divining stick that can find water . . .
Susan, my old friend the minister, put it into my hands, and I started across
the yard

thinking to pretend to find what she wanted. But at a certain point
the thing pulled so hard I had to hold on—it pulled so hard toward the ground.