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The Fire that Would Not Go Out
(Pdf can be found below.)
here was once a man with a fire in his chest.
Not heartburn,
and not grief — though it resembled both.
Not desire, though it stirred
when he looked upon beauty.
Not fear, though it often kept him awake at
night.
The village healers gave him teas and tinctures.
The physicians tapped,
poked, and sighed.
The monks offered silence.
The mystics offered
riddles.
Still, the fire remained.
He tried falling in love.
He tried making music.
He tried making
money.
He tried to extinguish it in every way he knew.
But the fire would not go out.
At last, an old washerwoman caught him staring into the stream where she
scrubbed.
“You’re not the first,” she said, wringing out a
shirt.
“First what?” he asked.
“To carry a holy fire,” she said, nodding toward his chest.
“It's not
meant to burn you up, you know.
It's meant to keep you seeking.”
She handed him the shirt, still warm from her hands.
“Try tending it,
instead of fleeing it.”
He left the village soon after, with only a satchel and his strange
fire.
He walked for years — through storm and starlight —
not to
quench the flame,
but to learn what it was lighting.
And wherever he went,
the lost, the longing, and the weary
would draw
near to his warmth.
—William Zeitler
2025 July 1
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