As When Drought Imagines Fire

Loot my point of view,
hove my heart
free from its hived booth
though I know your smoke,
its black blossom,
is a substance I’ll never become:
colors
of plaster and grass I’ve prepped
flawlessly, rivers I’ve whittled thin.
It’s a personal matter to me, the wind.
But let it be our cathedral feeling:
a sculpture
of ash
dragging its robe over
the hills because of us,
because of me.
Yellow is hurried,
but red moves like a swarm
through toothpick homes,
pans over roofs,
where the ethos we child
from the ground
will blacken to ruin.
Let’s glory
this roughened nap
of landscape,
this parched Arcadia,
with one nude-struck match and a breeze.

David Roderick
“As When Drought Imagines Fire” first appeared in Memorious, Issue 13.