Hello and welcome to Cook and Crank, the Cosmic Poetry Podcast. I'm your host, Simon Pole, the Cosmic Poet. How does the poet come by his sensibility? Is it indeed a fireless flame, which is the title of today's poem, The Fireless Flame? Like the jet fuel of the sun, perhaps it just burns and burns on springing to life when we are young, and fades perhaps with age. But even then, what is the afterglow? These are the questions we will attempt to answer after the break. The fireless flame The Fireless Flame within me burns and teaches what I know. I'll not be one who such heat spurns, while in tonight I go How lost the days when I it sought, though in effect flash blind, to what my hours spent me bought, their shadows now I find. Soon come the years when round me hangs, my tattered skin like rags, but still that rocket revs and bangs, its fuel me forward drags How like that source inside the sun, which endless sparks its fuse, from its hot core let wisdom run to those who might it use. I am its vessel, I suppose, such mysteries us gird, like Paul who up three heavens rose, and things unfathomed heard. O let the words which pass my lips with truth encompassed be, of that which I have stewardship, pure flame make worthy me. You have just heard The Fireless Flame from the poetry collection Poems for Ocean. I'm your cosmic poet and host Simon Pole. Visit the website SimonPole.ca for more cosmic poetry, including the book we've just read from. We'll be back soon on the Cook and Crank Podcast with more readings from the Poems for Ocean Collection. Until then, remember, poetry is the water of life, though whiskey might be too. Goodbye.