"Flame" by Elaine Smokewood read by Zoe Loeser
Channel: Remembering Dr. Elaine Smokewood, Poet and Teacher
Date: 17/10/2014

Flame by Elaine Smokewood

There are spells, I’m sure of it
Call them what you will
Enchantments broken
In moments of staggering clarity

Daphne’s transformation from girl to laurel
Unflinching resistance to the god’s desire
A metaphor for strength
The heroic will to preserve 
Self from violation

But is she a metaphor for fear?

I dreamed flame once:
A village on a mountain
A ring of ancient houses, hearths glowing
Bonfires on the commons, and in the center of it all
Two trees with tall trunks
Alive
Burning
One a conflagration of red
The other gold

I have never in my life been as happy 
As that moment, that dream

And then, one afternoon late in October
I looked out my office window 
High on the third floor, and there they stood
Two maples on the lawn
Ablaze
Embracing
Passionate, sensual as lovers
Cascading consummation of green and gold and red

How had I come to be sitting that October in a building named St. Clair
My sole window framing the two trees?

Between us
The pane of glass
Transparent
Sealed

The god’s desire is real
Her desire for the god is real.