"What dies before me is myself alone:
What lives again? Only a man of straw--
Yet straw can feed a fire to melt down stone."

Theodore Roethke, notes.

How lovely--to simply be straw for the fire.
To be utterly and completely devoted to the colorful, consuming, passionate fire of something bigger than oneself.

I suppose that we could all be straw for something: for art, for music, for relationship, for a cause, for peace, for justice, for youth, for education, for God--truly, I understand this idea best in light of God's power and glory; "For our God is a consuming fire" one translation even says.

And yet, a man can be straw for a fire than can melt stone--melt stone. How powerful, supernatural, that stone--a heart of stone, something as heavy and immovable as stone, as intimidating as a large stone obstacle--can literally and figuratively melt through the force of the fire that a man can feed with the parts of him that "live again," or, have been reduced to straw.

What remains after a death? After a loss? After tragedy and change? Roethke asserts what is left is a man of straw, seemingly useless, yet powerful in his ability to feed something larger, greater, and more powerful than himself. Or myself.

What dies before me is myself alone:
What lives again? Only a man of straw.

how lovely.