quick draft

after a fire

first to return: the ones who do not need anyone else.
the mosses, the lichens
able to cling to the rocks. to stand the loneliness.
after a heartbreak: the ability to get out of bed in the morning
to place one foot in front of another.
both serve the same purpose:
to break the rocks into manageable pieces,
soil for the grasses. to change the day
into something recognizable again.

this is how we heal, after a fire, a devastation:
slowly. dependent so much at first on the wind
to blow seeds of what once was over this bare earth.

then the green returns. scientists call this new growth,
this gross injustice of having to build something up
that was already there.

i want to quantify all of this. let me reduce
the world to the bare minimum, and bring it up again.

let me reconstitute this love story.
let me map this heartbreak.

here are the constants: your presence, the rain,
our love, turned variables. a drought. the unknowns:
the lightning, when the tenses started to change.

the one i love, the one i loved.
the ground wet, then dry.

to the student looking for answers:

not every forest fire has an arsonist
you cannot fault the lightning for striking
the fire for wanting to burn
not every heartbreak has a destroyer
no one teaches the heart how to love,
how to be loved. you cannot fault the heart
for breaking on its own.

and yet i want to quantify everything:
the scientist after a fire. loyal only to her senses,
to what she sees, what she can touch.

here are when the mosses start to emerge
here the first grasses, here the blooms returned,
the birds to the trees, the fox to her den.
the farther from the fire we get, new questions:
how strong must the wind be to shake new leaves from trees?
how many years until you stop haunting my dreams?