Apple Wood Fire

The apple wood was different

I’ve coaxed a fire in late fall

Slender sticks cut from Dad’s dead apple tree

Surprising, sweet scent accosts the nostrils

Worms its way inside your nose

Fills you with sugary warmth

Akin to maple syrup on warm pancakes

Aroma wafting towards your face

A subtle caressing of skin and sharpened senses

And blossoms in your mind.

The wood stove crackles and snaps

Like the branches on the summer, apple tree

Warmth penetrates and permeates

Inching its way into corners and cracks and closets

I fetch the plaid, throw blanket from the cold, spare room

And find the apple coziness there too.

Apple wood burns and gives a sweetness which

Hangs snugly in cinnamon air

The room is bathed in applesauce gold

I am curled in slumber on the grey, fur rug, toes content

Soft warmed hands like dough

Hair coiled like leaves about baby apples

I am caught in apple wood magic flames.

Sleep comes easily in front of the hearth

I dream of other gifts

Like the magic of sea grass turned silver

And waves that lap beneath the moon rising high

On a summer night when beach sand holds the warmth of the sun

My brown, bare toes quivering, kissed by the night dew

As I dance beside the shimmering, blazing waves.

Outside the frost burns white

On orange, shrunken pumpkins.

cailin raine