Further and Further Away from the Fireplace.

We are moving further and further away from the fireplace.
Away from the comfort of light and warm embers, which is the living.
From the brilliance of flickering flaming plan, all-embracing fire.
Content to comfortably burn, warm, until the end of burns.

And in more ways than one, our warm winter home is dying, its hearth retreating.
-The smartest man who once walked, tonight spoke to my soul,
“Things grew even worse than a pessimist of the deepest dye would have dared prophesy.
Awareness of this state of affairs overshadows every hour of my present existence. A.E.”
And I listened to him, his words written upon my wrists and ankles,
Shackles, not to be disgorged.

Our relatives continue to die, yours and mine.
Soon will be you and I.
One as we speak.
One tomorrow, or Tuesday.

And further out from the fire they drift, souls flaming, embers rapidly fading from view.
Rapidly fading from memory, and from view.
Sometimes even from God’s view, lost beyond space and beyond time; lost.
Further and further away, the fire dwindles.
Further and further from us, and the world seems to be abandoning it for summertime with her cruel callousness.
She is the evilest of women.

Life is slipping far away, as we all die off.
And further and further away from the fireplace, we all must go.
The way of the fireplace is to extinguish.
And so extinguish all, she makes ample haste