Andrew Motion: ‘Laying the Fire’

 The poet goes downstairs and finds his father building a fire.

It seems to me the poet is going down the stairs in his dreams, or in his memory or in his imagination. The point of view shifts: sometimes the poet is a boy and sometimes he’s a man.

Both man and boy are amazed at the meticulous way the old man builds a fire.

 

His voice is kinder than I expect,

as though he knows

we have in common a sadness

I do not feel yet.

 

The boy skates to his father on gray socks over polished wood floors.

I’ve been thinking of this wonderful poem, and I’m not sure why. My father died a couple of years ago as February turned to March. And as February turns to March, I’ve been thinking that each fire I lay will be the last of the season.

For many people, poems are things in books. Somehow, poems have gotten into my life.

• Source: Andrew Motion’s poem was published in Coming In To Land: Selected Poems 1975 — 2015; New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2017.  It’s on Poetry Foundation’s site:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/143667/laying-the-fire