Fire Poems

A more recent review



Fire Poems. opens with the author awakened from a pleasant dream to a crashing burning home, from which he and his wife escape through a window. The glass has melted and cracked away to create the portal for their getaway and rebirth. The cleansing fire burns away a dead starling trapped in a window screen. Through the entire book, the beat of Finn's Djembe drum resonates, the goat skin head cracked and burned away, the hollow body shooting flame. Perhaps the most poignant of all images appears in the short poem “Silence of Ashes,” in which a Plum Wood Flute, now gone, was once a blossoming twig, once a source of music and joy. A copy of his previous book, “Rites of the Earth,” escapes with charred pages. From these bits and pieces they reconstruct their lives. Fire Poems is a must read for all who have survived tragedy, and for those yet to do so.