The first feeling is ignition

When I heard you invited her to your concert and not me

The first feeling is ignition,
the sulferous scratch and fevered flame
of a struck match.
It's sometimes like that: the quick switch
from wood to flame.

And then anything can happen -- a crown
fire burning through living 
foliage and branches. Or maybe
a surface fire singeing 
leaf litter and tree trash.

Sometimes it lives in the ground itself,
smoldering slowly through decomposed matter
for days or months
or years.

(in Tweedy style, this is poem #1 of 2022)