Sifting through the Ashes

Doc Arnett

March 27

After a year or two of piling
old branches, stormfall deadwood,
un-salvaged barn renovation casualties,
a scrap or two of leftover railroad ties,
and at least one section sawn from the length
of a deeply split and roughly weathered telephone pole,
I set the whole pile on fire on a late afternoon
in the middle of March.

Fiercely red flames swayed and shimmied twenty feet high
in an un-mortared chimney lifted toward the sky
by the heated updraft sorting through
warbling shafts of light breeze
as the fringe of the fire scorched a circle
in the dried leaves of oak, elm, and catalpa,
ending at the edge of the grass I'd burned a week before.

A few days later, after the last bit of buried embers
had died beneath the gray, powdery remnants,
I combed through the remains of the fire,
using rake and magnet to find anything that might damage a tire.

At the end of a thirty-inch handle, 
two strong magnets
set in a circle of stainless steel snapped up 
whatever held an iron heart:
Nails, fence staples, bolts, screws, bits of metal fence, 
small tacks, hinges, barb wire, a pitted spike, iron rods, 
a threaded eyebolt fifteen inches long,
and a curved metal plate
that once listed everything the maker 
wanted the company to know
about a utility pole.

With each sweep through the ashes,
I could hear and feel pieces of ferrous metal
snapped to the magnet by invisible yet undeniable forces.

I lifted up the trapped shapes 
sprouting like Picasso's sea urchin from the steel,
peeled and pulled everything away
and dropped it all into an old plastic bucket.

Hidden by the ashes,
outlasting their coats of rust and deeper corrosions,
notions of forged steel and stamped castings 
were pulled and held by strong motion:

like ancient sinners drawn to The Prophet,
knowing that he will not approve of their lives,
yet somehow still drawn by more than fishes and loaves,
a vague, foggy notion of some force beyond their comprehension,

not yet realizing that the true measure of the Messiah
would be revealed in unfathomable dimensions of mercy 
rather than the scorching torch of narrow-eyed judgment.