Brieyla Cady

I found mushrooms, grasses, chestnuts, berries,
Harvested pear and persimmon and gingko
And even caught fish for supper.
But I was a breathless typhoon waiting
For the delicate unfurling of furred
Umbilical cords from coiled navels;
The mountainside sea of green and brown
Spurred by a warming sun.
Our family trekked into the mountains—
Me and big brother Young scurried after
Earthen imprints of Oma and Abeonim—
Bare feet embracing cool silt and songbird seeds.
We raced horned noru for the
Right to eat bracken.
Oma boiled tender fern shoots—our
Noses smiled at the perfumed vanilla steam—
They soaked in soy sauce and gouchujang;
Supper was rice, kimchee, and gosadi.

You were man’s first creation,
Born of sticks and rocks;
You are man’s eternal mother,
Sparking life for eons.
And though we’ve tamed you,
Caged you, flogged circus tiger,
You break your chains to
Dance naked in the woods,
Ceremony to your ravenous force.

If life is a circle you are its core.
Dynamic tangerine glow,
The mantle flows,
Cradling you in its center.
A jaguar in the jungle you hide,
Waiting for complacency.
Then you wake, stretching limbs
Until they burst from dredges and peaks,
Pouring warmth over land and sea,
Consuming old to feed the new,
Ordering all—submit to your flames.

You are birth and life,
Fear and destruction.
You burn internally, externally, metaphysically—
But above all you burn.
Pridefully indiscriminate,
The cleanser, the purifier,
The cool and salty ocean breeze
Turned feral in a heartbeat.
A rampaging inferno, a candle’s playful wink.
Eternal element,
Master of life and death,
Energy and the lack thereof,
You are fire,
And you burn in every atom.