1.
The campfire ran a marathon of wood.
……………………………….Father and son exhausted, mud
caked in boot heels kicked out, they
……………………………….stuffed the fire with kindling.
Every finger numb in a glove, they spoke
……………………………….the night into the moon and cast it
black. They wanted to stop manufacturing
……………………………….dark. But the history between them,
immobile, was moving, the both of them
……………………………….melting and freezing repeatedly,
apology by apology. Each meant theirs as a finish
……………………………….line, but an ending at this point
was impossible—the fire was too hot.
……………………………….They continued, and they began.
2.
Anyone can make out a tree
through fog, early sun behind it,
and miss the branches hanging
leaves that are not falling but
suspended. The heavy way
of living, like having a head
filled with ideas and no body
to lift it—knowledge without
the arms to heave it.
3.
Neither of the men saw the first
…………………………..of day spark on flint. They said what
wasn’t, and wasted nothing in silence
…………………………..that spoke the rest. Access to pain
is not a release from it; it’s
…………………………..a place of deep earth, the shovels buried
deeper. The fog above all words
…………………………..forgotten, though all of it breathed
in the mist. A wound is more wicked
…………………………..when the air has its way. Water has to
pool before it can raise the dead
…………………………..or the dying. It has to spread further.
4.
Fire burns into parts of the dust
that blows smoke in the air
that gathers the dust
that catches in the leaves
that fall, a whisper, to the dust
that scatters the dust
that dusts the leaves in dust
that rots the leaves
that, when wetter, drip to dust
that adds more dust
that lifts in the fog
that wets the dust that dries in trees
that fall to the dust.
5.
The father told his son he was trying to make him
…………………………..stronger. A better man than he was. He was
sorry. The son was sorry for having forgotten
…………………………..the snapping turtle on the stringer. It must
have suffered clipped to the chain they submerged.
…………………………..His father smiled; he was remembering the rain
that drove them away. He froze, boot heels dug
…………………………..into mud. The tree, from a great height,
spilled with thought of fire in the men’s minds,
…………………………..and the fog, the endless mist, dissipated.
For a moment, the two men thought of the sun,
…………………………..the burning. Father knew before son
what was coming next. You shouldn’t have hit me
…………………………..for that. Not for that. The father, beaten,
dropped his head, spoke lower: The clip we used was weak.
…………………………..Didn’t last. The son saw this
for what it was—the last burn from the last fire—
…………………………..and poured sand over the charred red.
6.
The tree leaving behind fog
is a kind of living. Simpler.
A wave of smoke dances
in the nothing that isn’t.
The air and the tree, the smoke:
All of it, simple. Our knowledge
of the gravity that grounds
particles doesn’t end the fire
that started life or the smoke
that suffocates. All the same,
we stop acknowledging the tree.