Blast Furnace Heart
// Alexander Etheridge
Ungainly and ugly,
white-hot on the inside.
Over time it
destroys itself with love
and incinerates
what it touches.
It melts the decades
into lava and pours it
into huge crucibles.
Its memory is long,
but it sees only
fire, only smoke.
At last its structure
implodes, clanging heavily
into dark. But a red coal
lives on, recalling
all the burning,
and everyone that
cindered while near it.
What’s left of the heat
mourns, what’s left of the
heart passes into cold.