Bonfire
Eric Bonholtzer
They huddle hands, yearning for warmth,
rags of mittens, gloves torn and fingerless
as flesh seeks to warm itself with the fire of old Times
and older still dreams. A bottle of spirits is passed reluctantly,
wryly, as it is dryly draught with those greedy fingers
who touch the jug to savor.
Strangely, or maybe not so strangely,
they feel close, closer than they ever had
on the outside, in that world.
Anesthetizing dreams could only be fulfilled in mind.
Dreams that were once greater visions, of similar poverty of soul
Never minding the inexorable downward progression.
How can one sink and still rise? Wondering,
gazing into the slowly smoldering blaze as a picture
of a tuxedoed man severing a ribbon immolates.
Deep as the ocean’s blue, staring out
at the impossible sky, like a mural
that has to be stared at long enough to be made sense of.
Through the communal offering they feel closer, safer
Not isolated stars but a cosmos of ideas and souls
Bound by something, around a garbage can giving warmth, drinking it in
Beneath freeway overpasses, beneath a vast endless night’s sky
The bottle passes parched lips and between sips of warmth seeping down into souls
Of bare feet and shoes filled with holes, as they gather to feel whole.
