Fire Storm: Poem Beginning with a Line from Jane Kenyon
By Lynn Wagner
Into light all things must fall, glad at last to have fallen
while the crown fires burn and branches break, charred
and brittled to the tall trees’ bones. Fall down from the sky
fantails, so stumble purple swamphen along the shore.
And day is night and ash is all while pyrocumulonimbus
counterclockwise circle the globe.
Into light all things must fall, glad at last to have fallen.
Australian sharpshooters cull ten thousand thirsty camels
brought to their knees. To the east, their brothers in choppers
tip carrots and yam to wallabies. Call the Karajarri to pray
for rain. Call the prime minister back home. And all is ash,
is ash, so the children make a circle and sing a tune.
Into light all things must fall, glad at last to have fallen
like the very same rain from the sky, that gratefully
commingled with beads of hail. And the black earth
knows its sacrifice. And the beasts, vegetarians and sad
predators alike, their bodies baptized in death, yet koala
come, pockmarked, to puddles and drink, satisfied, at dawn.
Lynn Wagner is the author of No Blues This Raucous Song, which won the Slapering Hol Chapbook competition. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where she won the Academy of American Poets prize. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Subtropics, West Branch, Green Mountains Review, Cavewall, and other journals. See more at lynnwagner.com.
Photo by Joanne Francis on Unsplash.