RED HOT SHRINE

by Laurie Bower

Of all the shrines about the house,

this one sat fixedly in the kitchen corner,

surrounded by stones she had gathered;

one for each afternoon walk.

It was the product of barter with a neighbor,

days spent as their “wrangler”

taking visitors horseback along the Great Mesa.

A Fisher wood stove.

Shrine to the Great Fire Gods,

made for a house ten times the size.

And when icy winds whipped at the windows,

she fed the stove what it wanted most.

“Give me juniper and pinon or give me death!”

it demanded.

“Give me your standing dead, your construction refuse – 

your pine and cedar too!”

She gave the stove all that it desired,

and in return it warmed the woman

and the dog

and the house, which was too small for it,

so much she would sometimes take off her clothes

and fling open the doors

in the middle of a storm.

Such burning.

The yogis told her she was the “sun of suns”

but the woodstove taught her so much more,

like how much a tree will give, even in death,

how fire needs to breathe,

how one log cannot burn alone,

it needs another up against it,

how soft wood is hot and fast,

but the hard wood is long and slow,

better for a long, cold night.

(Note: “Red Hot Shrine” was recently published in Poems from County Clare and Far Beyond: An Anthology of Irish Poets and Friends Around the World  eyepublishewe San Francisco, CA)