The roof floated away, beams disappeared
and thousands of ten-penny nails dropped
plumb into black. Most of the trees survived
though some had their hearts burnt out
and didn’t know they died in that storm
made of heat and wind and revisioning rain—
now ash droplets and chalk and fine-grain
drifting sand filling arroyos smooth
out the land as gently as my sister did, smearing
salve in her horses’ blasted eyes.
The palo verde by her door grew from stones
and did not pass away, but ruin
is not a wall, more like a hand with many fingers
reaching through the pines to grasp the house.
When she went back to the rubble, sifting
in screens for our mother’s wedding ring,
she already knew its small run of brilliance
had done.