My Common Stove

featured in Good Day: the book of paintings and poetry

My stove knows how to burn its firewood,
how to respond
to me who knows so little of what it knows,
to me who does not know how to make a stove.

 

My Common Stove

Bob Komives

 

My stove knows how to send smoke up its chimney
and warmth into my room.
Its warmth can please,
or it can save a half-frozen life.
Such is its success and popularity
that I could sell tickets to my stove's proximity.
But, I do not.
I share its warm knowledge freely
according to communal tradition
among family, neighbors, and kindred strangers.
Those whom my stove knows to please,
those whom my stove knows to save
give back nothing in trade
—except,
to carry forward in common tradition
what we and a stove
must in-common know.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 1996 :: My Common Stove :: ,9610