Today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo was

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.

brought this memory to mind so you’ll just have to imagine that deep voice coming out of the darkness.

dad’s face outlined in fire orange
where all backyard fades to history
here we sit around the concrete
block fireplace he built to burn
the papers and scraps and torment
here in the peaceful summer dark
here we gather our family
there may have been some marshmallows
he gave us long branches, sharpened
to a point with his pocket knife
and blew out his own burning puff
savoring bitter carbon sweet
and he sang – oh shenandoah
always a surprise to the last