“Pile high the hickory and the light / Log of chestnut struck by blight. / Welcome in the winter night.
“The day has gone in hewing and felling, / Sawing and drawing wood to the dwelling / For the night of talk and story-telling.
“These are the hours that give the edge / To the blunted axe and the bent wedge, / Straighten the saw and lighten the sledge.
“Here are question and reply, / And the fire reflected in the thinking eye. / So peace, and let the bob-cat cry.” Winter Night by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Collected Lyrics published by Harper and Row.
According to Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia by Carol Rose, and published in 1966 by W. W. Norton and Company, the author talks about wood imps: “These supernaturals … inhabit objects that are wooden, and are particularly malevolent beings. They may be inadvertently brought into the home with firewood…”
I’ve had a few fires in the fireplace already this winter and if I’m not careful to close the flue after the ashes cool, the cold night air comes right down the chimney into our family room. It looks for any way in. It reminds me to bring in more wood. I’m also careful where I buy the wood, for fear of wood imps… 
We had a fire going the other night and one of the logs hissed for a few moments. My dog perked up and seemed to listen from her cozy little spot near the hearth. Maybe there’s something to hear in the fire if we listen closely … a secret, maybe?
There is another interesting superstition concerning fire. “The superstition about poking the fire of a friend. That one should never poke another man’s fire until one has known him for at least seven years. It supposedly took that long to integrate a stranger into the corporate body of a family. Why seven years, it may be asked? The insistence upon this particular length of time is related to the old anatomical belief that one’s whole physical body underwent a complete change every seven years, at the end of which time one became in effect a completely new person.” An excerpt from the book, Superstition And The Superstitious by Eric Maple, published in 1971 by A. S. Barnes and Co., Inc., New Jersey.
“Deep inside wood sleeps primal fire. / Set free, it kindles back to life. /If there’s no fire locked up in wood, / Where does a tinder’s spark come from?” Wood and Fire by Khuong Viet (c. 1050) translated by Hyunh Sanh Thong and featured in the collection, World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse From Antiquity To Our Time published by the Quality Paperback Book Club, New York.
We know that flames have the ability to mesmerize us. We tend the fire and become engrossed in the way the flames dance and throw shadows on the wall. Fires reveal many things. Tonight, let’s stay inside where it’s warm and dry, maybe light a fire to melt the chill from our bones from being out in the deep cold, and see what this night will bring to Lovers and Other Strangers…
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Don Jackson
