This week’s poem, Suzanne Langlois’ “Thoughts on Fire,” meditates on the physical and devotional properties of flame. I love this poem’s vivid and imaginative attention to the elements, and its intimate metaphors and personifications as it considers their powers.

Langlois’ collection “Bright Glint Gone” won the 2019 Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance chapbook award. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Quarterly West, Whale Road Review, Scoundrel Time and Leon Literary Review. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches high school English in Falmouth.

Thoughts on Fire
By Suzanne Langlois

A candle’s wick is the smallest fire,
contained in the highest room
of a wax tower. A candle’s flame
kneels before a fire’s blaze.
Fire inhales air and exhales ash.

When fire meets water, it hisses,
but usually submits. When water
touches fire its fingers turn to steam,
which is wet smoke, the offspring
of two elements, or else their ghost.

Once decanted, fire cannot be
poured back into the match head.
Is a match a mother or an assassin?
It depends on whether you ask
the flame or the wood.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Thoughts on Fire,” copyright 2023 by Suzanne Langlois, appears by permission of the author.

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