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Banking Coal

By Jean Toomer

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jean-toomer

Whoever it was who brought the first wood and coal

To start the Fire, did his part well;

Not all wood takes to fire from a match,

Nor coal from wood before it’s burned to charcoal.

The wood and coal in question caught a flame

And flared up beautifully, touching the air

That takes a flame from anything.

Somehow the fire was furnaced,

And then the time was ripe for some to say,

“Right banking of the furnace saves the coal.”

I’ve seen them set to work, each in his way,

Though all with shovels and with ashes,

Never resting till the fire seemed most dead;

Whereupon they’d crawl in hooded night-caps

Contentedly to bed. Sometimes the fire left alone

Would die, but like as not spiced tongues

Remaining by the hardest on till day would flicker up,

Never strong, to anyone who cared to rake for them.

But roaring fires never have been made that way.

I’d like to tell those folks that one grand flare

Transferred to memory tissues of the air

Is worth a like, or, for dull minds that turn in gold,

All money ever saved by banking coal.

Copyright Credit: Jean Toomer, “Banking Coal” from The Crisis, vol. 24, no. 2. (New York: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, June 1910): Public domain.

Source: The Crisis, vol. 24, no. 2 (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1910)

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