For starting this new year, 2024, I have a poem, which I finished early last March. It’s about endings and beginnings, about the end of my 2022 & start of 2023. That New Year’s Eve surely ranks as the very worst of my life, as I got some nasty 2nd degree burns, which took a while to recover from. Close friends and people I’ve seen in person were aware of the burns, but if you’re not one of those, this is probably the first time you’re hearing about it. No need for sympathies at this point, I’m all recovered. (Well, the scars will remain, and I’ll never have hair growing on some of those spots, but hey, whatever, such is life.)  And by now, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I would make esoteric and spiritual mediations on the incident and turn them into a poem.

The poem might make it sound like it went worse than it did. Or better than it did. For instance, I don’t really say much about pain in this draft of it. But there was pain. Not so much from the burns, or even the skin graft surgery, but from when my leg and foot were swollen. Anyways, pain from the burns ceased to be an issue back in February 2023.

I’m happy to say that 2024 has started much, much better. I mean, well, obviously, it would be difficult to do worse than the worst New Year’s Eve of my life. Though this New Year’s Eve was a very quiet and relaxed one (and would probably look boring to an observer), it was what I needed. And the first weeks of the new year have gone exceedingly well.

Like last month’s poem “What is Absinthe?” this one will also go in my forthcoming poetry collection. Here’s the poem, enjoy!

Fire, Ashes, and Rebirth

The phoenix is famous for its fiery death,
for when burnt to ashes, it is reborn anew.
’Tis a great talent, and good to have,
but imagine how painful that method must be.
A mite more than others, such misery I know
from the blazed that burned my bare skin harshly.
A ritual celebration went wrong extremely;
on new year’s eve, the nascent fire
of sacred intent went surging out
of its proper pot to imperil myself.
What woeful wyrd had worked this bale?
Hot-headedness within became harrowing without?
’Twas soon extinguished, but not soon enough.
The liquid fire, alight on my flesh,
caused sores and harm in seconds flat.
Thus burnt to “ash,” I was borne to an “underworld,”
the liminal realm of a local hospital;
my wounds were treated, then the waiting began.
I lay in a daze, a little death,
resting in a small room. A range of people,
many masked faces, would make their rounds.
But time did pass, and I returned home,
just partly healed, but judged sufficient.
The brief respite was blissful indeed;
home is sweeter when the heart desires it.
But the fire of kaun, with a fierce swelling,
lurked in my leg and lingered yet on.
So barely a week, then back to the underworld:
my infected flesh needed further treatment.
A new wound I got, worked in my thigh,
for fresh clean flesh to fill the burns
after the hide’s corruption was hacked from my leg.
Free of infection, I was finally released,
for the long recovery while my life continued.
Through weeks of recovery I waited patiently,
like the wondrous phoenix that wants rebirth.
But bit by bit, I was reborn anew,
a phoenix eagle, to fly again.
Phoinix in Greek is defined also
as “reddish purple,” rightly appropriate
for the hue of my burns as their healing continues—
this phoenix skald now has phoinix skin.
The scabs fell off, but the scars will remain,
though pressure garments deplete them much
o’er many long months of committed wearing.
A red right “hand,” a relic of the occasion,
is one of those gloves that I wear often.
I feel yet still that fire lingering,
in the tingle of nerves, in the twinge on my knuckles,
where they laid the grafts on my leg and hand.
Whether ’twas wanted, it’s worked transformation
in my self and Self in a serious way.
I’m wiser at least, or one so hopes.
Was the fault that lead to the fire burned out
of me by the fire? Maybe it was.
But another “death” I have known through it,
renewing the energy I need for striving,
and as phoenix eagle, I fly again,
with the fire a part of my feathers always.

Copyright © 2024 Eirik Westcoat