I’ve restarted many a wood stove’s flames
from sleeping embers when the firebox
remains warm. In the darkening evening,
a faint glow glimmers beneath snowy ash.
We watch it as sleep seeps into our veins.
Some stone tablets I suppose say the
Phoenix rises from ashes. But I cannot
catch those who sleep below the tinder’s
reach, or rekindle those beyond the oak’s
broken trunk that spirits signals into the sky—
all red streamers, white steam, black smoke.

– Michael Dickel

Author’s Note: My wife and I  visited the too-new grave of my mother-in-law (of blessed memory), along with family and friends. A rare snow had fallen and the air chilled our bones. I listened to Psalms read in Hebrew, recalling the love we felt for her and she for us warmed me. Back in our warm home, reflecting on the visit, a North Woods farmhouse I once owned in the U.S., heated by a wood stove, came to mind. Those memories converged with the visit to yield a poem.