Understand the years of drought, the vast expanse
of unused land next door, labor costs,
the bottle rocket some local kid let fly.
After all, the dead were beneath it,
or above, safe in any case, no matter what
you ecclesiastical stance. And anyway,
the fireline the bulldozer cut around the place held.
All in all, it wasn’t the worst land to burn.
And those of us who followed the smoke,
whose houses squat nearby, surrounded by tinder and fuel,
have little to do now but take it all in—
the two plush yews turned blackened racks, each
limb tip gray and soft as the untapped ash of cigarettes;
the occasional knot of artificial flowers
still bubbling in the shade of their scorched stones;
the resident field mice thrashing.
By night, under the bright full moon,
it is a landscape Goya might love, a negative,
a photograph snapped mid-Rapture—every smoke wisp
a soul, every char mark on marble a flame,
and the whole blank expanse of grass
and weeds the night sky turned upside down.
You can walk among the stars where no one lives.
You could fall headlong to the roots on fire.