Brazier - poetry

Brazier

Life's fire
having blazed through this life,
left charred ambers glowing,
in aftermath of sweeping blaze,
this fading fire
with its ashy reminders,
ashes peeling in whorls,
flakes of purified ends,
passed through cleansing fire
lighter than feather,
flaking,
peeling,
this white, wispy layers,
floating-

Glowing center buried
in cocoon of feathery floating ash
diminishing concentric energy,
of inner blaze-

Youth's dreams,
green sapling of exuberance
sprouting forth arrogance,
enmeshed in strangulating irons
of social rigor
slowly being prepared to stoke blazing fire,
to feed those blazing furnaces,
till,
hardened and blackened,
worldly man emerges;
that dark, embittered, angry soul,
spitting spite
with calculated disdain,
billous,
subdued,
spitting poison-

Fine dust ,
of transmogrified substance,
a gritty covering,
of fine substance, dissolving,
irritating,
barely tolerated-

Fires lighted,
blazing,
blaze,
inner core of lighted hope,
soon buried in flaky friezes
of thin layers peeling,
easily borne on soft breath-

Filaments radiating,
from a single source,
each strand unseen,
just fine points burning,
self defining and totally nonobvious,
each in its expression
an affirmation of faith
lighting the spirit
within-

Were such a single filament,
in a blazing core,
were such to dim,
that solitary filament,
insignificant, unseen,
was such to assume a mind of its own,

what changes then would have
awakened in its wake?-

As I look through these fading fires,
as shadow of turning earth
trades its face
turning its back to blazing sun fast fading,
as earth in turning changes its face,
I look back to catch fading glimpses of light fading,
of life past,
its memories,
as though it were light scattered,
splices of brilliance dispersed,
in afterglow of past brilliance,
reminders of some long darkness coming,
though yet unexperienced not unforessen,
mind burnished in these ashes of fading fires,
these ambers,
afterglows slowing yielding to covering ash-