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Pyromancer’s Confession

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Written for Poetics Tuesday: “Beginnings Are Endings”,
hosted by Punam, who has asked us to write a poem,
taking the opening line of a well-known piece and
using it as the last line of our poem. This is my response.

© Freepik

I have always loved the moment just before ….
the way dry timber holds its breath,
how paper curls its edges inward
like a hand closing around a secret
it was never meant to keep.

There is a mathematics to fire:
given enough heat, enough time,
everything confesses what it is.
The oak becomes its carbon.
The letter becomes its truth.

I fed it slowly. Old receipts.
Photographs that made the winters longer.
A name I’d written on a hundred margins
the way the devout repeat a prayer ….
not from faith, but from the need
to fill the silence with something.

By midnight the smoke had softened
and I stood in the warm orbit, thinking:
this is the most honest I have ever been.
To let the useless beautiful things go.
To stand and watch and say with intent….
It was a pleasure to burn.

NAR©2026

Nancy’s Notes: My final line …. “It was a pleasure to burn” …. is from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

This is “Paper In Fire” by John Mellencamp

Poetics Tuesday: Beginnings are Endings

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thank you for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

34 thoughts on “Pyromancer’s Confession”

  5. I am the fire lighter in our house, so your poem resonates with me, Nancy. I love the opening lines, especially the simile:

    ‘…paper curls its edges inward
    like a hand closing around a secret
    it was never meant to keep’.

    I also identify with the burning of memories, those ‘photographs that made the winters longer’ and a ‘name I’d written on a hundred margins the way the devout repeat a prayer’.

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    1. My father-in-law took full advantage of fire, whether it was in the fireplace, the barbecue, or on the beach making a bonfire. I was always fascinated watching his process, making sure everything was perfect. In the right hands, fire is both majestic and cathartic. Thank you for your lovely comments, Kim; I’m pleased to know my poem resonated with you.

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