first glimpse of the burn
trees still stand where homes do not
our modern lives more combustible than wood
the neighborhoods not quite leveled
thanks to upstanding blackened trunks
an urban forest of ghost trees
but the homes, the manufactured stuff of our lives,
have been stripped from the landscape,
excepting steel car skeletons
imagine all the books offering themselves to air
raining down on Nebraska
the memory foam and down duvets
cans of oven cleaner going off like bombs
baptismal gowns and placemats
Nerf bullets melting
all the photos licked by flames
consumed by a heat furious enough
to wave it all into wind
only leaving our rocky foundations
and silent charcoal trees
