Cold Fire

My daughter stomps on the blue chalk
until it’s a lump of powder on the floor.
She pushes it into a neat pile
and calls it a “cold fire.” The small
toy animals huddle around it
and she joins them, keeping cool.

I imagine a few small twigs
turning dark and glassy, the soft
locks of just visible blue flame
dancing with one toe on the ground.
It draws the water out of the air
and freezes it to the fuel.
You keep it going with wet moss
and green leaves until it starts
to slide of the mound of ice
building beneath the twinkling embers.

And speaking of inverting the extremes
of nature, I could have often used
“hot ice” to warm my tea or my hands.

Imagine a planet like this. You’re welcome
to the arrange the gravity however you like.
But when you come to its inhabitants,
you’ll find their emotional lives identical
to our own. Once in a while, they’ll have
to imagine impossible things to set
the world right in their hearts: fire
that burns and blackens, cold ice,
wet rain, and creatures living lives only
slightly different from their own.