Such comings, givings, goings. Morning finds

the pole upstanding through a tractor tyre—

half a ton, those, so how did that get there?

All else scattered, as if dropped from the air,

litter brought from somewhere else to right here

by act of God or twister, washed ashore and beached

by long-shore drift and gale-force winds

and a hard night of high seas. Flotsam. Dreck.

We stack the fire at the eleventh hour,

begin by propping staves and leaning splints

against the centre-piece, build up and out

from slats and rafters through to joists and beams,

take notice of its changing shape: a cairn

becoming wigwam, then becoming dome,

becoming pyramid, then bell, then cone.

It has its features: priest holes, passageways,

a box-room, alcoves, doors. We hide and hoard,

stack bales of paper soused in paraffin

within its walls, stow blankets doused in oil,

load every seam with goods—goods to take hold—

and thread each flash point with a length of rope

soaked through with petrol, kerosene or meths

and trail the loose end to a distant place.

Unnecessary, but a nice touch, though.

That moment, then, before the burning starts—

like waiting for the tingle in the track

before the train, or on the empty road

before the motorcade, the time it takes

each elephant to wander from lightning

to thunder. That, or something in the bones

or in the weather, on the wind, a twinge

within the works of some barometer,

shouts of timber in the coral canyon

of the ear, the smell of burning pouring

through the chambers of the nose, a voltage

in the glades and groves of cells and glands. Hands

hang fire, hang loose in pairs of leather gloves,

and coolant flows and fills the trunks and roots

and limbs and leaves and needles of the lungs.

Then someone makes a move, a match gets struck …

The hiss first of damp wood, the fizz of steam,

a water-coloured flame, cradled and cupped

in a sheltered place, then circled and snuffed

by a twist of smoke. Something else flares up,

then chokes—a flame blown out by its own breath—

and a third and fourth are checked. More smoke

without fire, then a further space alive

with light, a chamber deep inside aglow

for good this time, fuelled with the right stuff,

feeding on something for just long enough

to tempt another thing to burn, combust,

to spread its word, to chatter its own name

through a stook of canes, to start a whisper

here and there that spreads across the broad base,

a rumour handed down, passed round and shared.

Heat dealt to every point, backed up by flames.

Sounds—the popping of corn, cars back-firing.

And sharps and flats, affricates, fricatives,

screams, an acetylene torch igniting,

a pilot light—its circular breathing.

The animal squeal of air escaping.

Snapping of soft wood—the bones of babies.

The depth-charge of a blown-out metal drum.

A pressurized can goes off like a gun,

at which a fox cuts loose from the fire, there