My house on fire in the midday sun
is more than I can watch.
My kindling sons, their fragile bodies,
turn to light.
My wife is lost in auguries of rain.
I take her hand, it turns to wind.
Dry grass is blazing on a windy knob
just out of sight,
as rats take cover in the distant barns.
The woodchucks dig.
The sheep and rocks are huddling in the fields.
My books are curling in the fiery tongues
that want this babble,
that would eat a house so finely cobbled
stone by stone, my house of paper,
flesh and words,
so easily become this fly-ash, bonemeal,
dust of language sucked and blown.