A Little Blaze Playing Like A Fish

But I remind myself that I've always had a knack for fire, for blowing gently on a hatchling flame, patiently feeding it the scraps of leaf or twig or bark suited to its young digestion. Eventually it grows into a vigorous creature that you have to curb. Eventually. But meanwhile you tend, protect, and wait. 

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There is nothing that I need, at this point. I'm walking in open country under a night sky that grows as I walk: more stars, more hidden countries. My feet are strong: they hold and handle the earth easily. I outdistanced my rivals a long time ago, and even the sound of them has vanished. 

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Why should I even want to mark the way? No one is coming after me.

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Either this is enough, or nothing is. And the lesson is the same in either case: wait. Tend the fire. Watch the sky.

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As the old afflictions fall away, and they do, I become sometimes insubstantial: I can feel the night wind blowing through me, ruffling the net of nerve and blood vessel just as it used to ruffle my hair: and if it's blowing the right way I can lift my feet and let it carry me. How many others have passed me by, just this way, floating on the wind, when I was too heavy to detect them? There's a whole new company to be found, maybe, when I dissolve to the wind completely.

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Across the Gorge, palisades rise from the river, laced with waterfalls. I was not expecting a dawn like this: pale gray and colder than the night. Noises come from the current: a curious sleek black head breaks the surface, examines me carefully, and ducks away. Birds begin to call to each other, sharp barks that diminish quickly as they repeat, until the calls can't be sorted from their own echoes.

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Exhalations of mist, and a lightness behind the hills to the east. I may have walked all the way to the sunrise, a sunrise I never expected, and which puts me out of all reckoning. 

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And that brings me to the fire: I have matches, with much of the stuff rubbed away, but still enough to kindle, if handled cleverly. I'll handle them cleverly. By the time the sun comes up, behind the mountains, I'll have a little blaze playing like a fish.