Long before craftsmen
sought walnut, cherry and oak
for cribbage boards and magazine racks

Daddy set a match to the unusable cuts
from logs he sawed into planks
and two by fours.

Massive configurations
of bark and knotted scraps
lined the ditch bank.

Massive conflagrations,
my father’s inferno,
burned well into the night.

For years, I avowed the actions
of a six-year-old daughter
who feared the flames

would devour and destroy him.
I tossed the contents
of that little red can onto the pyre,

holding firm in my belief
it held only water
At sixty-one,

is it safe now to confess
I only wanted to see
the fire dance?