The evening sky is a royal blue grey,
an eerie striation from steel to
cornflower blue lined with
a furrowed brow of clouds blowing
treetops flat and swirling anything
not heavy enough to be held down.
At home the ashes from my fire pit
threaten to leave their circular
brick home, a reminder that what once
grew there has now been reduced to
black flakes, taken up by an unseen
cloud breath.
A month ago, my son and his friend
burned the last of my fallen peach tree
while I was sleeping.
How does a solid ringed wood trunk
disappear to ash
to air
to something the wind can play with
on a cold winter day?
Where did it go?
What combustion
what fire ate the atoms
of this once living being,
now spread by a storm
circling into what mouths breathing
landing onto what soil waiting,
what soil waiting to breathe?
This soil waiting to take it all in,
eat what was once a tree
now flakes flying
under a stormy royal blue grey
sky.
