Engine Company 252 Brooklyn

I rise as a guardian of the night and see the light of the fire

 

Call Of the Guardian

 

I rise as a guardian of the night and see the light of the fire.

I race through the streets of the sleeping city

Toward a beckoning fervent beast waiting in malevolent flames.

 

I arrive and my heart is seized by the swiftness of the fury and the anguish.

The fire breaches the darkness with a light

Both savage and sublime, as fiery fingers reach and scratch at the blackening sky.

 

I push out the borders of fear; away with the voices of doubt.

With ladder and line and a fervid heart,

With purpose and push, I force myself into a voracious red wind.


I dive forward into darkness beneath the erupting ash

And give myself to the infinite void;

Into halls black with death and red with rage.


I reach with a desperate hand across the narrowing divide

Between the dying and the dead

And take from there what that red beast can never claim.


 

I carry my fallen brethren into the awaiting arms of Hope.

I lie the lifeless ones down,

Surrendering them to God and wonder of His Way.


I stand upon the smoldering remnants of evil’s effort

Both victor and vanquished, as the soot and the steam

Rise around me like the vestiges of a breath long expelled.


I am weary of body and never far from death but life is my calling

And I hearken to its’ voice everywhere,

Never to leave unheard the cries of the daunted and the desperate.

 

I stand steely tall along the sad blue line

As those who gave with greater love

Pass highly by, below the echoes of melancholy strains.


I return through the haze of a city dawn and ride through the days.

And tomorrow and tomorrow I will stand this watch,

Ever aware, ever vigilant, waiting for a distant toll to call me.

 

O, I ride as a guardian of the night, toward the far away glow

Of my destiny, dauntless, duty bound,

Endeavoring to a life fully-lived within the grasp of mortality.


And when my watch is over; when my tour is ended

And I am finally called home
To the embrace of my gentle guardian, I will ride again.

 

 

Racing through the heavens, oh so swiftly
For I will ride there in glory,
With angels’ escort, aboard a screaming red chariot of honor.

 

 

 

 

Lt. Robert E. Higgins, FDNY