The Phoenix Pyre

The Phoenix Pyre

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A thousand years had worn him thin—

Gold feathers dulled to rust,

His fire dimmed beneath the skin,

His bones grown light as dust.

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He climbed the highest, harshest crag

Where winds like razors flayed,

And built his pyre with dying sag

Of spices in the shade.

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Cinnamon sticks like fractured rays,

Myrrh tears in amber drops,

Cassia twigs in sunlit maze—

Each memory he stops:

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The first sunrise he ever knew,

White-hot on newborn wings,

The mortal king whose sword he slew

For scorching songbird kings...

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To western winds he bowed his crown,

(No bird left now to see)

And struck his beak against a stone

That sparked reluctantly.

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The smoke first curled—a lover's hand

That caressed his aging form,

Then bit his breast with teeth of brand

And took his flesh by storm.

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What agony begets the light!

What ecstasy in pain!

His feathers melted into night,

His blood became the rain.

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The pyre roared like oceans tipped

From heaven's broken vault,

Till all that cracked and hissed and dripped

Was silent... then—a halt.

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From cooling ash there came a sound—

A yawn of scarlet flame,

Then wings unfurled, rebirth-newfound,

With no ghost left to tame.

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The fledgling stretched his sunrise throat

And sang the world awake:

"All ends are but a ragged coat

That new beginnings take."

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Now watch when desert twilight bleeds—

You'll see his shadow pass,

A flicker where no fire feeds,

A shape in molten glass.

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For every death he dies anew,

But never quite the same:

The phoenix lives to prove it true—

That all love fears the flame.

From the Scorched Scrolls of : The Lost Books - "Libri Perditi"

Where even ashes remember their names.