At reunions, we dig a pit in my parents' yard 
and build a campfire to roast a pig overnight.
My brothers and I stay up late around the fire,
drinking beer or branch water from mason jars,
singing songs, telling tales, catching our breaths.

We take turns spelling each other,
giving each a chance to rest for
the following day. My youngest brother
taps my arm and I know it's my watch.
Carefully, I extract my daughter from
the crook of my arm and myself from the cot, 
and walk out to sit quietly beneath the eternal
clock - a quarter till Orion, I note, as I sway
my head towards the embers and my eyes float
into the fire and yet beyond. At once the center
of the fire is the Source of The Clock.

A cricket concerto, punctuated by pops from
the burning wood and coyotes' howls, augments
the smokey aroma of the wood and the pungent
sweet smells of roasting pig. I turn the spit, add
wood, and pull my blanket closer as a slight breeze
pushes the rising smoke towards my face. It stings
my eyes and feels sticky to my skin, but I greedily
accept these minor discomforts from the burning
oasis as I take another sip from the jar. The synergistic
effect produced by all my senses is at once overwhelming
and calming.

Then, into the deep of the fire I look, into the mound of
glowing logs and the bed of grey-white charred ashes
and the flowing, blue flames like Lethe.

From the infinite depth of the supernal fire,
echoed in the pit of fire at my feet,
and the image of the flames in my eyes,
and the warmth of the blaze on my skin, and the pungency
of the smoke in my lungs, and the sounds of the crackling
in my ears, and the flickers of flames in my soul arises the
sense - the conviction, really - that there are other eyes staring
simultaneously into that same blaze and feeling that warmth
and hearing those sounds and tasting some brew and
smelling that smoke, and sensing me at the other end -
hunters and gatherers, caravanners and pioneers – and more.
Amid the ashes, a faintly luminous thread appears -
a spider's web, a nexus, an infernal convergence of flames
and eyes and souls.