Fires in ditches and fields with
Newspapers, boxes, and dry grass
As our accessible anthracite;
Once smouldering enough on its own feet
To become its own source is when
The limbs were stripped and introduced;
Torn from trees or salvaged from
The outlying waste - they fed the
Crackle - spitting whispering embers skywards.

As children with little sense, our noise
Was all we could offer to appease
Wayward youth's disorder.
The crippled heat was secondary,
But to watch things burn was valuable;
A ring of lives held tenuous.

One thing I came to know
From the nights we gathered in droves is
That within this life of loose bonds and swells
I soak in the hungry gloam.