Bonfires on the ice

It’s getting colder as the flames
rise from the bonfires, real and virtual.
See how they flicker in the darkling air.

What’s sending up such enormous sparks?
Lines that once lasted a lifetime.
Look, they show up clear, then disappear.

Here’s one: I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
And another: A squirt of slippery Delight.
Now they’re coming thicker, faster.

Which watch not one another out of fear.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
You don’t want madhouse and the whole thing there.

A charred scrap settles on my hand
(Belinda smiled and all the world was gay)
flares for a second, is whirled away.

Eventually the ice will calve and dissolve;
the bonfires fade and crash.

Harry Ricketts

Harry Ricketts has published around 30 books, including literary biographies, personal essays and twelve collections of poems (most recently, Selected Poems, Te Herenga Waka Press, 2021).