after the evacuation order’s lifted

when you first arrive home
after the town caught fire
things will look the same:

soft slabs of snow will mushroom
atop parked car roofs
and Christmas lights will still wrap trees

it’s not until you reach your kitchen
that the full import meets you –
your home still stands, thank God

and the firefighters and Aeolus –
and it stands at 45 degrees and falling.
one of you starts the pellet stove

while the other takes the truck to find more pellets
and free space heaters
and you quietly begin living a new way.

next you look at the gas stove (impotent)
and realize you haven’t means to boil water
and can’t drink what’s in the tap

so you forage for water, too, life stripped to its elements,
five-gallon jugs filled by a friend
in the next town west, where taps magically still flow clean

and now you learn to pour liter carafes
and even dainty cups after a day’s practice
from what’s usually your campsite stash.

when the large men clomp inside
in their Carhartts and work boots
big beards and cold toes

and give you back warm nights
and hot water, you push gifts into
their wide palms: candy canes and

chocolate bars, gushing thanks, and beer,
and it turns out one lives two blocks away
and his toddler and your little neighbor are friends.

and in the midst of all this confusion
so many new ways of doing/being
there’s also the dark knowledge

that your son’s kindergarten teacher’s home
is now just another smoldering pit
and your dog’s brother now has no yard to call his own,

and 500 neighbors don’t have these inconveniences
of gas and water to deal with now
because everything is gone