Campfire

From a distance,
white sparks jump
to the empty air
in circles around
Polaris.
Pricks of a needle
through the water
refill, not before
the flicker of a lesser
and greater power
in heat and in passionate
cold.
Unidentified?  We face
the known with fear
of knowing
so we can call it
a lonely truth
in a long-shot
washboard of sky.

This is a failed attempt at a project I'm trying for my fourth quarter creative writing two class.  I can't say yet what it is, just know that this isn't really part of it! Since it failed to meet my parameters, though, it is not necessarily a failed poem.  I'll let you know what poems I write are part of it, and hopefully you'll notice what they do/do not have in common and maybe tell me? ;-)