A Fire on Ganymede

by Timons Esaias

You cannot build a fire

on Ganymede,

gather the deadwood

and work up a pleasant sweat

chopping and splitting.

You cannot sit around the campfire

afterwards, making awful coffee

in a pan, telling impossible lies

about how unique your own past has been.

You cannot breathe in the bitter wood-smoke

on Ganymede,

the product of inefficient oxidation,

you cannot, that is, pollute the air

and not care because it is so pleasant,

and say to yourself I will not think

about how horrible it would be if all

the galaxy’s billions were indulging

in a campfire

at once, and gee what’s next, anyway?

Yes, you cannot have that problem

on Ganymede

because you can’t have a campfire there

and so, frankly, one might as well

not go.

Now there is

undoubtedly

some fine reason or another to see

the place, and it’s probably

all right for some

city-bred bristle-head who

has never seen the outside

of a mall.

Send them to find the undoubtedly

superior pleasures

of Ganymede

but leave us old codgers alone.

We have no time for it,

we know better, we have

our standards.

And don’t even ask me what the Buddha

would have urged

about detachment and divorcing the ego

from the material.

When Buddha lived, everyone

burned wood, or dung, or

charcoal

for all their fires, every day.

The smoke hung everywhere,

he wouldn’t have been able

to get away from it

and I’ll bet, when he finally

left the world of illusion,

finally got free,

he felt it missing

and briefly

regretted it.