Fire Warnings by James Richardson

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 10, 2016   Fire Warnings   James Richardson

So much on the verge of flame. In a hot wind anything is tinder: paper, sage   feverish with bees, your auburn hair, my hand that glows with a thought. Sunset   or sleepless dawn, nothing is sure but what’s already burned— water that’s ash, steel that has flowed and cooled,   though in the core of a star, they too would fuse and rage, and even volcanic glass and char,   and the cold seas, and even     what we once were might burn again— or in the heart.            Copyright © 2016 James Richardson. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “A fairly large part of me wishes that poems could be purely lyric and not contemporary, using the same 200 words over and over to say, over and over, the same old things. That part wrote this little poem about desire (well, maybe except for the stuff about nuclear fusion). The precipitous lines, with their lightly hit rhymes, are the mood itself, ‘on the verge.’” —James Richardson   James Richardson is the author of During (Copper Canyon Press, 2016).  He teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Poetry by Richardson   During (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) "Haymaking" by John Clare "Waiting Again for Biopsy Results from the Second Floor Exercise Room" by Jennifer Franklin "Ebb" by Edna St. Vincent Millay Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038