Night fell and Lysa and Elsie came home from shopping and the house was dark except for the backyard. It was lit up like a Broadway play. A revamp of “The Tempest”. – A huge fire burning and I was standing there, a silhouette waving a poker-stick like a staff conjuring this beast of a conflagration in the back yard. Immediatly Elsie came out. “What are you doing dad? “, taking me down about 20 notches.

“I don’t know.”, I said, “Just burning some shit, I guess.”

“Can I help?”, she asked.

“Oh yeah. Definitely.”, I said.

She began assisting with amazing focus – selecting branches and lobbing them into the flames with what seemed like a new found dexterity. She never once took her eyes off the fire – tossing in more when she saw fit. Soon, she too had her own poker-stick. I was transfixed by her instant dilligence to the mission at hand. I had the feeling that she knew why I needed to start this fire, even if I didn’t know.

“I’m getting hot.”, she said, wiping her forehead.

She walked over to the edge of the swimming pool and grabbed an inflatable mattress and dragged it back to the fireside.

She remarked about the full moon and then laid down on the mattress, staring into the fire and was very quiet.

I stood staring at the fire, then at the moon, then at her laying just a few feet away from the flames which were quite a bit less ferocious now and I began feeling tired myself. I laid parallel and behind her staring at the flames with my head propped up on my hand and bent elbow. Within a few minutes she was fast asleep.

I could hear a symphony of crickets chirping all around me. The fire was crackling and the wood smoke swirled around carrying orange embers up to an invisible pocket in the sky and in the distance, a freight train was crossing over the river.