Refiner's Fire

First poem for Advent

My friend Alan has a goal for Advent of responding to the day’s reading with something creative, and I’m trying to get on board. I can’t promise I’ll make it every day, but I thought I might post what I come up with here, to share a bit and motivate myself. I’ve written almost no poems since being in grad school and want to get in the habit again. Here’s yesterday’s scripture and my poem, inspired by a recent trip to Kelowna where evidence of major forest fires was all around.

Isaiah 64:1-2

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!
As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!

Refiner’s Fire

On far mountains red fires stare
from a blue face,
smoke combed back
above them in the early winter breeze.
A controlled burn this time of year
gives the illusion fire’s in our command,
corralled in hearths or sleeping
in a little matchbox drawer.

But all around us stand
black trunks from two decades ago
when fire rushed down
and ate all fragile things.
Hills emptied out, trestles infected
with a spread not even helicopters
could put out, until it all collapsed,
blistered beams still smoking
in the low ravine.
Nothing could escape that winnowing.

We pray you would come down.
We build an altar and we wait.
We sing about refiner’s fire.
But who desires to be consumed?
What of us will stay intact
like iron spikes in burnt-out beams?
When we call for your fire,
we imagine it will fall selectively
on far-off enemies.
But it is us we bind up on the peak,
trussed on a pile of stones.
We raise a knife above our heads.

Give us grace to pause.
To search our heart’s thickets
and all that’s tangled there.
Then listen for that word:
”Let fire fall on me instead.”