<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Putting Out the Fire<br><br><i>for John, who stocks the medicine cabinet of the heart</i><br><br>Hearing children shriek at play,<br>today, first time in 58 years,<br>I don't hear that burning boy,<br>Fire rising like vine, twining<br>up his thin limb. My mother<br>chasing him, racing flames<br>and winning. Wrestling the boy<br>She smothers the reason for<br>screams with a sheet, ripped<br>white from the line, fast as<br>fire. The koan says<br><br>Put out the fire across<br>the river. Impossible,like<br>this task of living,<br>loving the unloveable<br>in ourselves and each other.<br>Chasing the screaming child<br>who forever lives scarred,<br>Impossible to fix the past. <br><br>There is no fire, no river, only<br>impossible demands—<br>helping and healing while<br>we burn. We are the flames.<br>Every day, more of us<br>burns, turns to ash. It<br>is the world's way. <br><br>There is no fire, no <br>river. Only life<br>ripping through us,<br>a storm tide pushing<br>the river upstream, muddy<br>And roiling. Life,<br>a slow burn, like sleeping love. <br>Life, a burning river<br>Within. No fire to fight,<br>no fight. <br><br><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Rebecca del Rio<br></body></html>