Blue Flame

At Mid Week Motif, Susan set us the challenge to write about bonfires. My thoughts went in two directions for this prompt. Susan included a quote by Francois le Duc de la Rochefoucauld:

“Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones,  as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire."

Winter afternoons,

in Grandma's peaceful, tiny living room,

she would smile at me,

small wayfarer in a turbulent world.

Come sit by me, she'd say. I'll light the fire,

and we can watch the fairies

dancing in blue flames.

Those flames burn brightly in my memory,

these days when

my grandma's face stares back at me

in the mirror,

and I say to my great-grandson,

Come sit by me

and we can watch the fairies dancing

in the flames.

My second thought was how, in long-gone times in Ireland, villager elders would light a huge fire on the common, and people would carry hot coals from the communal fire to light their own hearth fires.

To a communal source, 

one by one we come,

day after day,

gathering sparks from the screen

with which

to light, inspire 

and elevate our way,
and keep the ghosts
of loneliness
at bay.

There. I think I'm done.  The second one I dedicate to you, my blogger friends, with thanks.