Summary
This poem has to do with the ways that anger and resentment can end up harming us not just as individuals but as a society. Six people sit around a fire, each with a piece of wood that could keep the fire burning. However, they look across the fire at one another, and several different areas of difference bubble up between them, and so they sit and wait. The first person is a woman who looks across and sees a black man sitting across from her. The prejudice she feels keeps her from putting her wood into the fire. ...