Up
in Flames
by Mary Redman
by Mary Redman
In
a rusted barrel
behind
a frumpish house,
raged
a growing pyre fed with scraps
from
a cardboard box.
Its
tender was no white-garbed virgin
stirring
ritual flames, but a young wife
in
a cotton housedress.
Brown
hair fastened at the base
of
her neck escaped
and
lashed her face with strands
while
she worked against the wind,
her
mouth a grim line. There was time—
the
babies napped, and the older children
were
off to play.
Impassively
she incinerated pages—
was
nearly finished, had heaped a final load
into
the backyard drum.
Then,
caught off-guard by smoke-
reddened
eyes and heat that pinked her cheeks,
she
watched a gust lift one lit page,
sail
it aloft, and set the field ablaze.
When
the firetrucks and her neighbors
arrived,
she said nothing of her blunder.
An
empty box lay in stubbly grass,
while
embers of dreams she’d released
floated
like fireflies through the white oaks
hung
with green acorns
in
thickening afternoon shadows.
Mary
Redman
is a retired high school English teacher who currently works part
time supervising student teachers for University of Indianapolis. She
enjoys having time to volunteer and to take classes at the Indiana
Writers Center. She has had poems published in Flying Island, Three
Line Poetry, Red River Review, Northwest Indiana Literary Journal,
and Tipton Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.