Flame On!

A while back my daughter sent me this quote on poetry.


"Poetry is the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry
is just the ash."
-- Leonard Cohen


I liked it, and composed a short poem in reply:


The body goes to ashes
The outer shell to dust,
The inner life to poetry
As life incendiary must.


I thought about this again today while I was cooking steak on the grill (barbequed with curry sauce... mmmm.) I like the idea of a life incendiary. A life that is burning well, leaving the clean grey ash of poetry behind.

But I don't want my life to fizzle out like a candle sputtering or like a campfire slowly dying or a cigar cooling and going out. I don't want to burn out fitfully. I like the notion of my life being like the propane tank on my grill. It's finite, limited, but capable of either great heat or a low simmer, cooking fast or slow. And, most of the time, you have no idea when it's going to suddenly go empty. You're blissfully cooking along, you hear that characteristic "pop", and all of a sudden... its done. I like that.

The propane tank is productive and useful, doing what it was designed to do, right up until the end. Sure, what you're grilling right this minute may not be done when the fuel runs out, but think of all the good meals it made before! Maybe a few things got burnt, yeah, but... mmmm, remember all the good stuff! And the smells, the entertaining, the comraderie that surrounded those flames on the grill. Yeah.

So, that's what I want. Light me up, turn the dial, let's go! And when I go "pop" - so what? I did what I was supposed to do at the last - I was cookin', baby!

Can you feel the heat?

:)