11 Charcoal

If you’ve built a campfire,
There is a thing or two to know,
That you can bury it in dirt and mud,
Extinguishing the glow.

So now you have the fuel and heat,
But no oxygen to spare,
Triggering a chemistry,
That works without the air.

Then later when you dig it up,
And roll the mud wall back,
There’ll be a new thing buried there,
A new thing, but glossy black.

And so without knowing it,
Opening new doors,
I wonder if it will burn again,
Your imagination soars.

You roll the mid-night embers back,
In a private silent trance,
Picking out the biggest chunks of char,
Birthed in that fiery dance.

Your discovery now mounded up,
It is black and red and tame,
Hotter than it ever was,
But without the smoke and flame.

By now human nature’s back,
Sitting smugly on your shoulder,
I can never let this secret out,
At least till I get older.





Did you ever wonder how charcoal is made? I didn't think so. But today's prompt is "Charcoal" so we have to be true to our school. Actually, most of the charcoal we buy at the store is a mixture of wood char and coal (but not all). But you can make your own charcoal by building a hot wood fire, and then sealing it up from the air with a mud wall. The trapped heat then transforms the remaining wood into charcoal. This poem imagines when this discovery was first made by the cavemen all those years ago. It must have been a valuable invention.