THE MOUNTAINS ARE ON FIRE, AND THE PEOPLE ARE AFRAID
Throwing a good-bye kiss, he pauses on the lower
stair landing. Spring is early this year—are you
going to hang out the hummingbird feeders?
*
She weeds the flagstone walk, prunes a newly
planted rose. Seeding lettuce in wet dun beds, she whispers,
Bare just one leaf to the moon.
*
Leveling at thirty-one thousand feet, he streaks
through a lead-pencil sky. Over blackened
canyons, the contrails swirl like snow.
*
Four hours of Discovery Channel and she wonders:
Why aren’t the redwoods impervious to fire? How does a humpback
echolocate? How does he come
*
clean out of the water? Each morning
she makes ritual
of pinching the coleus buds.
Glint Literary Journal 