Stove gloves,

long-sleeved and heavy-leathered.

I can pick up

chunks of burning wood

or pyrolized char coal.

I am Prometheus!

I control the fire fer sher!

And the poker and ash shovel and bucket and bellows?

That makes me Hephaestus.

I feel the more than blood-hot air.

I smell the smoke and particulate

irritating my sinuses.

I am drawn up the flue

and out the chimney pipe

atop the fire and forge.

Today the smoke

falls down to the barn

and then to the creek

and then to the jet streams

circling and circling

just as sure as the creek’s currents

flow to the Gulf of Mexico.