A single flame from a candle cupped in the alter boy’s trembling hands as he attempts entry into a cathedral on a cold stormy evening. Though rain poured and wind whipped, somehow the boy was able to deliver the flame to the alter and light all the other candles one by one, flame to wick until finally the alter is aglow and dances as the wax begins to drip.
The Olympic torch is lit and passed like a baton from runner to runner around the world until the opening day ceremony, when finally resting a while at her next venue.
An electrical fire in a wall socket burns a home to the ground. In the smoldering ashes is a family photo.
A feel a fire once in my head, now dormant in my chest, where my heart clenches like a fist fights to keep me alive long enough to let the fire grow beyond my being setting the world aflame one mind, one heart at a time.
Ancient tribes rolled wood on shavings until smoke became flame and flesh were seared and devoured.
In the 1906 San Francisco earth quake firefighters without enough water burned buildings in hope to rob the fire of it’s fuel and contain it. But it was uncontainable.
A black plume rose to the sky and mushroomed like a cloud of an atomic explosion. We were evacuated from our homes and held up the hill in the mountains with the rest of the families who were in harms way, but the winds would shift and within days we would return. Life soon carried on in its usual fashion, forgotten, until now.
Tavius Dyer 9/29/10