Wayne Lee

Fuel for the Fire: A Pleiades

  If your thought is a rose, you are a rose garden;
and if it is a thistle, you are fuel for the fire.
—Rumi

The house finches fight over
thistle seed at the feeder
that I hung three days ago on
the backyard fence.

They don’t need me, but I need
them to show me how not
to burn.

Writer, editor and teacher Wayne Lee (wayneleepoet.com) lives in Santa Fe, NM. Lee’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Press, Slipstream, The New Guard, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Writer’s Digest and other journals and anthologies. He was awarded the 2012 Fischer Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and three Best of the Net Awards. His collection The Underside of Light was a finalist for the 2014 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award. His chapbook Buddha’s Cat was published by Whistle Lake Press in May 2024. His memoir Service Husband: A Caregiver’s Journey Through Disability, Suicide and Recovery is forthcoming from Mercury Heartlink in January 2025, and his collection Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in April 2025. Lee is the founder and host of the online Tuesday Poetry Practice community.