"The house was technically not on fire," she said into the phone, short gray hairs
staying in place as she bounced down the ash-strewn road. "But it came right up
up to the walls. It was so hot inside the firemen couldn't go in."

Crossing drought-hard, churned-up paths,
trunks, twigs, shreds of bark, the land still
open to the origin of its dark, fiery depths,

feet camber over and down hills of tractor
prints, stems without roots, rocks dug up,
pushed aside: the path that was narrow is
suddenly wide.

A faint smell of Promethean smoke hangs
in the air. There is no me I can honestly be.