Flames

This morning, because of a furnace malfunction, I sat in front of our fireplace watching the flames of a warm fire.  We talk about flames in so many ways in literature.

Fire and flames lend themselves well to metaphor.  They easily can represent passion, but just as easily destruction.  Anything we think of that involves heat both figurative or literal can be described in terms of flames.

But, I suppose as I watched the fire this morning, besides being grateful for it's warmth, I was intrigued by it's dance.  It may be an overused descriptor for fire, but dance is what a fire does.  Each flame follows it's own course.  It is alive with twisting and turning, sometimes reaching high while at other times staying low and more controlled.  It is not predictable for we cannot see the air currents and how they move it this way and that.  We cannot see the fuel and how it feeds the hungry animal.  We only see the fire, alive, dancing, dancing, never stopping, forever dancing.

I can see why it excites us, why it scares us, why we write about it.