How To Make A Man Out Of Fire Poem by Janice Windle

I wrote this in response to a beautiful poem by Charles Bennett called 'How to Make a Woman out of Water'

Take a walk in a forest.
Find a stick. Choose carefully.
Not a dry stick, but one with resin that seeps sweetly.
(Perhaps a smooth eucalyptus,
Potential ignition hidden only just below the skin.)

Make a hollow in a soft pine tree,
Deep enough to reach the fibrous centre of the trunk.
Rock and roll, spin and rub,
Until the friction starts a spark between the two,
A curl of smoke rising in between
That promises a conflagration.

Add a breeze from the West Wind,
A soft blast of air
That will fan the spark into a tongue of flame -
But gently, not to extinguish it with too much power.
Pile on soft aromatic grasses, faded with summer sun,
Warm memories of other flames, but
Do not fail to stoke the fire with hard
Black coal from the earth's deeps,
With remnants of dismantled ancient castles,
Cricket bats, goal posts,
instruction manuals, magazines and
The wooden swords of bygone childhood.
For these are fuels that fire a man
Before he steps like Phoenix
From the pyre.

Dig a wide moat
And fill it with your silken water.
From your spring. Don't circle him
with any stagnant pond
That time will dry and and he will later loathe.

Tend the fire
Until it's strong and bright, then find a steady wind
To blow until a cave of glowing fragments opens up
And you can see his centre.
Warm yourself in his glow,
But don't expect to touch his depths,
For they are dangerous and would consume
All who come too close. And now
A deluge will not damp him,
A tempest only bring the roaring conflagration
To heights you had not dreamed of
When you picked the stick
That lay inert upon the forest floor.