The Maynard
Spring 2015

0:00

 

 

A Fire Hydrant on Camino de la Amapola

When we walk past it every day, it’s easy
to forget its virtues: patience, reliability, fortitude.
Go close, you’ll hear the continuous rush
of a swift underground river.
Yet it never moves, even on muddy days.
I’d like to know that kind of stillness—
emotions roiling while the body’s calm.
It waits to be needed. Cast with the word open
and an arrow faithfully guiding us which way to turn
if fire were to ascend beyond one small flame,
and in our disquiet, our despair
when we could lose everything dear, it gives,
full-on, what we are mostly made of.