５月２３日（月曜日）の読書会の課題書『世界のエリートがやっている最高の休息法』（久賀谷亮著、ダイヤモンド社、２０１６年）で紹介されていた詩です。
焚き火の火も薪と薪との間にすき間がないとよく燃えないという比喩で、休息の必要性を語っているのでしょうか
FIRE
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on logs,
then we come to see how
it is fuel, and the absence of fuel
together, that make fire possible.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
Poem | Fire by Judy Brown in San M. Intrator and Megan Scribner, Editors, Teaching with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003) page 89.
