Poem in which Prometheus Considers Battery-powered Tea Lights and Forests Burning

A world ablaze: I wanted that
too, but not in the manner of 
a raging California brush fire. 
Not like the man who drives 
into town for his high school 
reunion, then spends two days
driving along the Calaveras road, 
setting pieces of fast-food paper
wrappers on fire with a cigarette
lighter before chucking them
out the window just to see
what happens. By ablaze
I meant the mind leaping 
out of the darkness of its 
miserable self-containment 
to see how, if heated metals
bent toward the same task, 
a bridge might arc over 
the yawning gorge. I meant
there was danger, but also
promise of beauty; of ships
that humans could build and fill
with provisions so they might move
forward out of calamity instead of
perishing in the current. 
By ablaze, I meant the dance
girls in the village learned 
when they were young, balancing
three votive candles, each stuck 
inside a glass: one on the head, 
the other two carried on each open 
palm. The gold flicker on their faces: 
something a tea light could never 
reproduce. I love the quiet 
blue flame of a stove's pilot 
light, the brilliant sparks 
before molten glass twists into
a clear vessel with an awestruck
mouth. I've walked into cathedrals 
just to gaze at rows of lit 
tapers in rows above the metal
box, ready to accept a coin or 
slip of paper with petitions 
for the world not to end in violent 
conflagration, but burn as in glow,
as in the Latin ardere, which is
also the root of ardent.