Heraclitus on Fire

Thales thought the world was water.
Anaximenes said air—
or rather aer, which is to say
a mist or vapor. On any late
spring morning in Miletus, there
it is, aer, hovering where the road
dips toward the sea. If you sit
for an hour, on a rock, you almost
see its double metamorphosis:
(1) easing upward as the day rises,
becoming air and fire, and (2)
drawing itself together on the petal
of a columbine and sliding, water now,
down the thin stem to take the shape
of earth. Aer it is, by observation
and sweet symmetry, the central stuff
to which all this returns.

But Heraclitus knows the one
is fire, the insubstantial blaze
that changes everything. Pythagoras,
Xenophanes, and Hesiod
knew many things but failed
to understand, refused to see
the forest leaping to become
the red it really is beneath
the apparent green, refused to feel
in their own flesh, the unexpected
kindling and the going out.