Bonfires Around the World: Fall on Panfelova

Bonfires. It's an Autumn thing. Burning leaves, twigs and branches. A burst of fire towering into the night. A stream of charcoal smoke trailing into the heavens. Orange and gold flames glistening against black skies.

It’s universal. The Autumn poems we read in English Club mostly all refer to them. Here's Robert Lewis Stevenson, born in Scotland:
In the other gardens
and all up the vale
From the autumn bonfires
I see the smoke trails....
Sing a song of seasons
Something bright in all;
Flowers in the sumer,
Fires in the fall.

Katherine Mansfield, from New Zealand, paints an image of "children's noses...red as roses..." in the fires of an "Autumn Song." Mary Oliver, Ohio and Provincetown, USA, in her "Song for Autumn," sees “the piled firewood…longing to be on its way." And Roselynn Curro, in Rochester, NY, tells about a night “trick or treating” with her young son:
It is dark, crispy cold.
A silence fills the trees.
Soft sounds, faint lights,
The smell of burning leaves.

Bonfires around the world, connecting us through the senses, and bonfires here in Starobelsk, Ukraine.

So Princess (приинчесса), Luba’s cat, and I watched Luba build a bonfire in front of her house on Panfelova street last night. She added twigs and branches, stoked the fire, broke more branches off nearby trees, piled them on, and set the night aglow. The flames grew higher and higher, brighter and brighter, against the blue-black sky, against the backdrop of a gold weeping willow tree, one of the most beautiful I have seen. We stood mesmerized. Luba satisfied. We watched the fire crackle, sparkle, and shoot up into the sky, the unforgettable sights and sounds and smell of Autumn. Fall on Panfelova. Bonfires everywhere.