V

Fire is your teacher and sacred healer, flame of renewal devouring the old. Each night you enter its forge as kneeler

and each dawn from its ashes you unfold. Consider the phoenix, ageless and wise: nesting in spices, igniting in gold

conflagration at will, so it dies only to rise reborn from smoldering pyre- a cycle eternal its life epitomize.

The feathers turn to flame in a crimson choir, its old body crumbles, glowing embers scattered, yet from that cinder-bed a fledgling takes sire-

a chick of fire emerging from remains tattered. Smoke curls around it like incense at birth, then with a cry, it spreads wings unscorched.

In you there burns that same essence of fire; the spark of spirit that never can die uses death’s heat to temper your soul higher.

When you cast yesterday’s self on the lie of the flame, you enact a cosmic law: destruction preludes creation’s reply.

Ash covers the altar after the awe of immolation-soft, gray, and humble. From humblest ash, fertile growth we do draw.

See how after wildfire, green sprouts rumble through blackened earth, richer for what was burned. Destruction and birth as one dance entwine, jumble.

Thus do not mourn when the old self is turned to ash; honor those ashes as holy dust. They are the soil in which new self is earned.

With reverence, gather them if you must- a pinch of yesterday held in your palm then released to wind in a gentle gust.

Watch the gray motes scatter without alarm, returning to elements whence they came. In this letting go, find a deeper calm.

The fire within you, once fearsome flame, becomes a lantern to light your way true. Its purpose not to hurt, but to reclaim

what is pure in you, and burn what is false through. Trust in the burning; trust in the light born anew.