Fire.

I had an image last night. ( I hate to say vision because it sounds so Cassandra. This was a picture, just a short, short, short film, or a Polaroid that develops and just as quickly vanishes into a dun chemical chaos.)

I was thinking about the Big Bang - everything in existence, or the potential of everything in existence, rushing from one infintesimal pinpoint out into infinite expansion.

And it occured to me that the sun is not unique. (Of course, you all knew this, but I only just realized it.) The sun is not a flat yellow round sticker clinging to a blue Colorform sky board. It has no triangles afixed around its circumference.

It occured to me that all of the light in the known universe is derived from happenstance flames, dashing towards the outer reaches of everything. The sun, all of the stars, are made of burning debris. They are cosmic leaf piles, red and gold and copper cast-offs. They are trash can fires, toppling through the dark, and we huddle around them, glad to have come by them, as if we had just hopped off a train from Des Moines with a red bandana bag thrown over our shoulders on an icy February morning. Or, as in deVaca's account of his adventures in pre-colonial Texas, they are the bonfires of helpful natives, carefully arranged to provide warmth and safety as we move closer and closer to our destination.