Campfire | Kevin Sterne 

we baked logs in a ritual of fire. watched flames lick like tongues, on green pine. hissed and spit and we listened for whispers and murmurs in the forest. birch, beech, and maple applaused in collars like carrot and golden rod. leaves waved in the wind, fallen and falling, and washing down with the water in the river and into the setting sun.

the river gives life and takes life; gives parish and gives passage for the coyote, the hunter, the bear. fisher, photographer, and the woman who watches the sun set from the east bank and the sun rise from the west, by a fire with cold hands. 

frost bites hardest in the morning when the ground’s wet, and the logs won’t light. but there’s still last night.

Kevin Sterne is the author of the story collection All Must Go (House of Vlad, 2020). He is the winner of the Phoebe Journal 2020 Fiction Prize. He loves trees and his dog Kodi Bear.